| Summary: | The following essay asks whether art history is still a ‘coy’ science in the sense outlined by Donald Preziosi in his groundbreaking Rethinking Art History of 1989. Surprisingly, the answer is ‘yes,’ because Preziosi’s central point has been largely missed. While most art historians embraced forms of anti-foundationalism and relativism as a response to the ‘crisis of art history,’ Preziosi actually pointed to a deeper problem – the contingency of a disciplinary vantage point at all. In reviewing Preziosi’s critique of art history, and his demonstration of a healthy reflexivity in his work on Aegean art and architecture, it is shown that the proper response to Preziosi’s challenge is to place the act of writing history at the basis of questions of the discipline’s status.
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