An in-depth and nuanced look at the complex relationship between two dynamic fields of study.

While today we are experiencing a revival of world art and the so-called global turn of art history, encounters between art historians and anthropologists remain rare. Even after a century and a half of interactions between these epistemologies, a skeptical distance prevails with respect to the disciplinary other. This volume is a timely exploration of the roots of this complex dialogue, as it emerged worldwide in the colonial and early postcolonial periods, between 1870 and 1970.

Exploring case studies from Australia, Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, and the United States, this volume addresses connections and rejections between art historians and anthropologists—often in the contested arena of “primitive art.” It examines the roles of a range of figures, including the art historian–anthropologist Aby Warburg, the modernist artist Tarsila do Amaral, the curator-impresario Leo Frobenius, and museum directors such as Alfred Barr and René d’Harnoncourt. Entering the current debates on decolonizing the past, this collection of essays prompts reflection on future relations between these two fields.

Ideas about human nature are forms of anthropological knowledge; they are woven from ideas about human characteristics that vary historically and culturally: about the body, the psyche, the social context, and transcendence - in other words, about the "nature" or "essence" of humanity. Thisinterdisciplinary publication uses representative case studies to explore the particularities and evolution of ideas about human nature, as communicatedby the media, and to draw conclusions about the fundamental relationship between mediality and ideas concerning what it is to be human.

The 19th and 20th centuries witnessed a change in the attitude of artists travelling to Italy towards the canon of Classical art. There is now an increased interest in whatever is contemporary a "there is a reception of the Futurists, arte povera or Italian design, artists turn to Marcello Piacentini, the a oeSuperstudioa or Aldo Rossi. This book on The Grand Tour in the Modern and Post-Modern Age enquires into the necessity of the a oeItalian Experiencea in the present-day training of artists and architects in the face of historical developments.