Presentography

How has art history produced its histories of the contemporary? In a recent development, there are more job postings for historians of contemporary art than for all other categories of art history combined.  Groups such as "Historians of Contemporary Art" have formed to consolidate this new professional periodization.  This talk will briefly identify the phenomenon of "writing the present," identify its historiographic patterns and urgencies, and give examples of how such a history might be done, and undone.