Setting out

At the end of this calendar year I will be retiring after thirty years of teaching art history at Hunter College. My new leisure will offer time to complete several books, including my reflections on art history, entitled "The Mind of the Beholder" and "Homolexica," a sequel to my 1985 "Homolexis," now out of date.

My blog will be used for shorter comments. I am a strong believer in comparisons. For this reason I will often make reference to earlier events, theories and thinkers--not to mention those from other cultures. By the same token, there is meaning in Croce's dictum that all history is contemporary history. This means, I think, that all our delvings into the past are colored by current interests. But they should not be determined by contemporaneity. There is nothing more provincial than present-mindedness.