“What Sort of Problems Does an Artwork Pose?”: Joan Kee on Art History as an Infinite Game

In the Foreground: Conversations on Art & Writing

In this episode, Caro Fowler (Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute) speaks with Joan Kee, professor of art history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Joan describes the influence of growing up in Seoul, Korea, but shares her uneasiness with centering a sense of self within art historical writing. She reflects on modes of description and their political resonances, and muses about the specific strengths and limitations of art history, particularly when it comes to categories like “global contemporary” or an assumption of a unified “we” within the discipline. Finally, she shares current projects, including one on Black and Asian artistic intersections from the early 1960s to the present.