On Writing Borderless Histories of Art (Routledge, 2025):

Writing Borderless Histories of Art is an aspirational, historical, and critical project that offers a fundamental rethinking of the relationship of humans to the rest of nature.Social justice, Indigeneity, abuses of power, and the environmental crisis are the burning issues of today. A transcultural approach calls for abandoning structures of domination that are built into the academic disciplines, regardless of the scale or extent of interpretation. Drawing upon writings from a wide range of fields, Claire Farago argues that Art History can play a role in advancing the public’s interconnectedness with the planetary life-support system that so urgently needs to be restored. Studying the discourse on art at the intersection of global capitalism, environmental degradation, and human subjection over four centuries, Writing Borderless Histories of Art advocates ontologies that do not distinguish between the sentience of humans and other animals and go beyond the dualistic metaphysics of the nature culture divide.While this book is addressed to a wide audience, its multilayered approach also reaches out to art historians for whom chronology, canons, and style are structures fundamental to the organization and operation of the discipline. The book is neither a history of ideas nor a search for the origins of art history, but a recognition of the structures that drive its narratives.

“Writing Borderless Histories of Art is an extraordinary book, as bold as it is erudite. Claire Farago brings to light formative connections that have always existed between art making, climate theory, and transcultural relationships, but which have been overlooked by scholarship in art history. Eloquently written and incisively argued, this is a book of vital contemporary relevance that will transform the field. It deserves to be read by every art historian.”Monica Juneja, Senior Professor at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, University of Heidelberg, Germany, and Distinguished Professor of Humanities & Social Sciences, Shiv Nadar University, India“Eurocentrism has a cost far beyond the obvious power asymmetries we see damaging the world today. Claire Farago’s erudite and readable book makes that point forcefully in relation to climate transformation and art discourse. She powerfully combines her deep knowledge of European ancient to early modern thought with an expansive view of contemporary global society and its brutal extractive methods, tracing the origins of human exceptionalism in European thought to the present. Demonstrating the interrelations among globalization, colonization, disciplinary formations, and the traffic in art objects, she offers refreshing counter arguments that are collective, relational and ‘borderless.’ A tour-de-force!”Amelia Jones, Robert A. Day Professor of Art and Design and Professor of Art and Design, Art History and American Studies & Ethnicity, University of Southern California, USA

Claire Farago

I publish on processes of transculturation, the epistemological foundations of art history, the materiality of the sacred, the writings of Leonardo da Vinci, and critical museum studies. My anthology, Reframing the Renaissance (1995), introduced transcultural approaches to art history. Its sequel, Writing Borderless Histories of Art (2025), is an aspirational, historical, and critical project that offers a fundamental rethinking of the relationship of humans to the rest of nature.

Claire Farago is Professor Emerita at the University of Colorado Boulder, currently living in Los Angeles.

• LinkedIn
• Email

Select Publications

Publications in Print

Writing Borderless Histories of Art: Human Exceptionalism and the Climate Crisis, Five Fugues on the Future of the Past. London: Routledge Press, 2025.Transcultural Histories of Art and Artisanal Epistemologies: Knowledge to Be Made. Co-edited with Susan Lowish and Jens Baumgarten. London: Routledge Press, 2025.The Fabrication of Leonardo da Vinci's Trattato della Pittura, with a scholarly edition of the Italian editio princeps (1651) and an annotated English translation. Editor and principal contributing author. Author of historical introduction, two chapters, co-author of translation and reader’s notes; includes transcription and the first English translation, critical apparatus, reader’s notes, appendices, and eight additional essays by Claire Farago, Janis Bell, Carlo Vecce, Matthew Landrus, Anna Sconza, Juliana Barone, Maria Rascaglia, and Mario Valentino Guffanti. Foreword by Martin Kemp. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill Press, 2018.Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago, Art Is Not What You Think It Is. Oxford–New York: Blackwell-Wiley, 2012. Manifesto Series.Re‑Reading Leonardo: The Treatise on Painting across Europe 1550–1900, contributing editor. Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2009.Leonardo da Vinci and the Ethics of Style, contributing editor. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008.Claire Farago and Donna Pierce, Transforming Images: New Mexican Santos In‑Between Worlds, principal co‑author with additional contributors. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago, eds., Grasping the World: The Idea of the Museum. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.Claire Farago and Robert Zwijnenberg, eds., Compelling Visuality: The Work of Art In and Out of History. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.Claire Farago, ed., Leonardo da Vinci: Selected Scholarship in English (5 vols.). New York & London: Garland Publishing / Taylor & Francis, 1999.Claire Farago, intro and ed., Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America 1450 to 1650. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1995.

Selected Articles and Essays (Refereed)

“Non finito: Leonardo's Saint Anne and its Written Legacy.” In Decoding Leonardo’s Codices: Compilation, Dispersal, and Reproduction Technologies, edited by Paolo Galluzzi and Alessandro Nova, 111–30. Florence: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz / Max-Planck-Institut and Museo Galileo; Venice: Marsilio, 2022.“Leonardo on Reading Pictures: The Paragone in the Workshop.” In Leonardo's Paragone in Context, edited by Johannes Gebhardt and Frank Zöllner, 43–61. Leipzig: University of Leipzig; Petersburg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2021.Entry on “Giorgio Valla, De expetendis et fugiendis rebus, Venice, 1501,” with Matthew Landrus. In La Biblioteca di Leonardo, edited by Carlo Vecce, 422–27. Florence: Museo Galileo / Giunti Press, 2021.“‘Race,’ nation et histoire de l’art.” In Idée nationale et architecture en Europe, 1830–1919, vol. 2, Architecture and National Identities in Europe 1830–1919, edited by Jean-Yves Andrieux, Fabienne Chevalier, and Anja Kervanto Nevanlinna, 17–41. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2019.“‘Ingenuity’ and Artist’s Ways of Knowing.” In Renaissance Futurities: Art, Science, Invention, edited by Charlene Villaseñor Black and Mari-Tere Álvarez, 130–50. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019.“Re-Reading Richter and MacCurdy: Lessons in Translation.” In Leonardo in Britain: Collections and Historical Reception, edited by Susanna Avery-Quash and Juliana Barone, 323–52. Florence: Olschki; Vinci: Biblioteca Leonardiana, 2019.“The Global Turn in Art History: Why, When, and How Does It Matter?” In The Globalization of Renaissance Art, edited by Daniel Savoy, 299–313. Leiden: Brill Press, 2017.“The Face of the Other: The Particular versus the Individual.” Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas 22, no. 10 (2017): 101–26.With Matthew Landrus. “Leonardo da Vinci.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation, edited by Margaret King. New York: Oxford University Press, online publication.“Understanding Visuality.” In Seeing Across Cultures, ed. Jeanette Peterson and Dana Leibsohn, 239–56. Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2012. Publisher page“Reframing the Renaissance Problem Today: Developing a Pluralistic Historical Vision.” In Crossing Cultures: Conflict / Migration / Convergence, ed. Jaynie Anderson, 227–32. Melbourne: University of Melbourne Press, 2009. Table of contents with Farago’s piece (CIHA conference volume)“Who Abridged Leonardo da Vinci’s Treatise on Painting?” In Re-Reading Leonardo: The Treatise on Painting across Europe 1550–1900, edited by Claire Farago, 77–106. Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2009.“‘Three Ducats in Venice’: Connecting Giorgione and Leonardo.” In Leonardo da Vinci and the Ethics of Style, edited by Claire Farago, 147–58. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008.“The Peripatetic Life of Objects in the Era of Globalization.” In Travel, Cultural Exchange and the Making of European Art 1400–1900, edited by Mary Sheriff, 17–42. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.“Reframing the Renaissance Problem Today.” In Reframing the Danish Renaissance, edited by Mi. Andersen, H. Johannsen, and B. Johannsen, 71–78. Copenhagen: Danish National Museum, 2011.“Thinking beyond the Baroque.” In Rethinking the Baroque, edited by Helen Hills, 99–122. Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2011.“The Sacred, the Secret, and the Ethics of Historical Interpretation: What I Learned from the Santos of New Mexico.” In Medieval and Early Modern Devotional Objects in Global Perspective: Translations of the Sacred, edited by Elizabeth Robertson and Jennifer Jahner, 229–48. New York: Palgrave Press, 2010.With Carol Parenteau. “The Grotesque Idol: Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real.” In The Idol in the Age of Art, edited by Mi. Cole and R. Zorach, 105–32. Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2009.“Remaking Art History: Working Wonder in the University’s Ruins.” In Making Art History: A Changing Discipline and Its Institutions, edited by Elizabeth Mansfield, 157–72. London: Routledge, 2007.“Letting Objects Rot.” In Artwork through the Market, edited by Jan Bakos, 239–62. Bratislava: Komenius University, 2005.“Leonardo's Prospettiva Composta in the History of Pictorial Composition.” In I mondi di Leonardo: Arte, scienza e filosofia, edited by Carlo Vecce, 107–29. Milan: Edizioni Università IULM, 2003.“Silent Moves: Locating the Ethnographic Subject in the Discourse of Art History.” In Art History and its Institutions, edited by Elizabeth Mansfield, 191–214. London: Routledge, 2002.“Die Ästhetik der Bewegung in Leonardos Kunsttheorie.” In Leonardo da Vinci: Natur im Übergang, edited by F. Fehrenbach, 137–68. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2002.“Transforming Images: New Mexican Santos between History and Theory.” In The Visual Culture of American Religions, edited by D. Morgan and S. Promey, 191–208. Berkeley–Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001.“The Status of the ‘State as a Work of Art’: Re-Viewing Burckhardt’s Renaissance from the Borderlines.” In Cultural Exchange between European Nations during the Renaissance, edited by Gunnar Sorelius and Michael Srigley, 17–32. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1994.“Gabriele Paleotti on the Grotesque in Painting: Stretching Old Cultural Horizons to Fit a Brave New World.” Medieval Feminist Newsletter no. 16 (Fall 1993): 20–23.Review of Villa I Tatti Studies, II, edited by Nancy Struever, 1987. Italica 67, no. 1 (1990): 85–88.“Jean de Léry’s Anatomy Lesson: The Persuasive Power of Word and Image in Constructing the Ethnographic Subject.” In European Iconography East & West, edited by G. Szöny, 109–27. Jozsef Attila University, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995.“‘Vision Itself Has Its History’: ‘Race,’ Nation, and Renaissance Art History.” In Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America 1450 to 1650, edited by Claire Farago, 67–88. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995.“The Battle of Anghiari: A Speculative Reconstruction of Leonardo’s Design Process.” Achademia Leonardi Vinci 9 (1996): 73–86.“The Defense of Art and the Art of Defense.” Achademia Leonardi Vinci 10 (1997): 13–22.“Exiting Art History: Locating ‘Art’ in the Modern History of the Subject.” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 70, no. 1–2 (2001): 3–19.With Donald Preziosi. Review of The Value of Things by Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska. Basel–Berlin: Birkhäuser and London: August, 2000. CAA Reviews (2001). http://www.caareviews.org/“Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari: A Study in the Exchange between Theory and Practice.” Art Bulletin 76 (1994): 301–30.
Reprinted in Leonardo’s Artistic Career after 1500, edited by Claire Farago, vol. 3 of Leonardo da Vinci: Selected Scholarship in English. New York and London: Garland / Taylor and Francis, 1999.“Renaissance Art out of the Canon: Art, Gender, and Cultural Diversity, 1500–1600.” In Women of Color and the Multicultural Curriculum: Transforming the College Classroom, edited by Liza Fiol-Matta and Mariam K. Chamberlain, 152–55. New York: The Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 1994.“Leonardo da Vinci’s Defense of Painting as a Universal Language.” In Word & Image Interactions: A Selection of Papers Given at the Second International Conference on Word and Image, Universität Zürich, August 27–31, 1990, edited by M. Heusser et al., 125–33. Basel: Wiese Verlag, 1993.“Fractal Geometry in the Organization of Madrid MS II.” Achademia Leonardi Vinci 6 (1993): 47–55.“The Classification of the Visual Arts during the Renaissance.” In The Shapes of Knowledge from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, edited by Richard Popkin and Donald Kelley, 23–48. Dordrecht–London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.“On Leonardo da Vinci’s Defense of Painting against Poetry and Music and the Grounding of Aesthetic Experience.” Italian Culture 9 (1991): 153–70.“Leonardo da Vinci’s Color and Chiaroscuro Reconsidered: The Visual Force of Painted Images.” Art Bulletin 73 (1991): 53–78.
Reprinted in Leonardo’s Science and Technology: Essential Readings for the Non-Scientist, edited by Claire Farago, vol. 5 of Leonardo da Vinci: Selected Scholarship in English. New York and London: Garland / Taylor and Francis, 1999.

Selected Articles and Essays (Invited, Including Reviews)

Review, “COLONIALISM ‘The Whole World in his Hands’: A Decolonial Approach to European Concepts of Art.” In A Companion to Contemporary Art in a Global Framework, edited by Jane Chin Davidson and Amelia Jones, 89–104. West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2024.“Collaboration,” co-authored with Donald Preziosi. In Storytellers of Art Histories: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life, ed. Alpesh Kantilal Patel and Yasmeen Siddiqui. Chicago: Intellect / University of Chicago Press, 2022. UCP title page“A Very Different Kind of National Art History: Looking to the Future from the Past.” In Writing on Modernism in Central Europe: Method, Value, and the Pragmatics of Scholarship, edited by Steven Mansbach. Umeni/Art 69, no. 2 (2021): 198–202. Also published in Journal of Art Historiography.“Thoughts on the ‘Global Turn’ as a Disciplinary Future: Escaping Eurocentric Approaches.” Modos: Revista de História da Arte 5, no. 3 (September–December 2021): 122–139.“Artists Compelling Action on Climate Degradation: How to Think Like Victoria Vesna and Leonardo da Vinci.” In Toward a Non-Anthropocentric Ecology: Victoria Vesna and Art in the World of the Anthropocene, edited by Ryszard W. Kluszczynski, 106–43. Gdańsk–Łódź: Łódź University Press / LASNIA Centre for Contemporary Art, 2020.“The Future of the Past: What Comes after World Art History?” In Mix & Stir: New Outlooks on Contemporary Art from Global Perspectives, edited by Helen Westgeest and Kitty Zijlmans, 395–401. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021.“Entitlements and Entanglements.” Review essay of Situating Global Art: Topologies, Temporalities, Trajectories, ed. Sarah Dornhof et al. ArtMargins, October 3, 2020. Link to ArtMargins“In Defense of the Classical Tradition: How the Humanities Make a Difference Today.” Figura: Studies on the Classical Tradition 6, no. 1 (Jan–June 2018): 3–12.“Cutting and Sharing the ‘Global Pie’: Why History Matters to Discussions of Contemporary ‘Global Art.’” In Decolonizing Art Institutions, OnCurating issue 34 (2017), ed. Dorothee Richter and Ronald Kolb. OnCurating special issue“Imagining Art History Otherwise.” In Global and World Art in the Practice of the University Museum, edited by Jane Chin Davidson and Sandra Esslinger, 115–130. London and New York: Routledge, 2017.“Whose History? Why? When? Who Benefits? And Who Doesn’t.” In New Worlds: Frontiers, Inclusions, Utopias, edited by Claudia Mattos Avolese and Roberto Conduru, 283–303. São Paulo: Comité Brasileiro de História da Arte and Comité International de l’Histoire de l’Art, 2017.“Desiderata for the Study of Early Modern Art of the Mediterranean” and “Arguing the Mediterranean: A Response to the Panel Discussion.” In Can We Talk Mediterranean? Conversations on an Emerging Field in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, edited by Brian A. Catlos and Sharon Kinoshita, 49–64, 113–119. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.Book Review of Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe’s Early Modern World by Benjamin Schmidt. Renaissance Quarterly 69, no. 3 (2016): 1090–91.“Conceptions and Determinations of Baroque and New Baroque in the Last Decade.” In Perspective: Actualité en histoire de l’art 1 (2015): 15–36. Roundtable with Jens Baumgarten, Stefano Jacoviello, Monika Kaup, Gabriela Siracusano; moderated by Helen Hills.“A Short Note on Artisanal Epistemology in Leonardo’s Treatise on Painting.” In Illuminating Leonardo: A Festschrift for Carlo Pedretti, edited by Constance Moffatt and Sara Taglialagamba, 51–68. Leiden: Brill, 2015.“The Absolute Leonardo.” Review essay of The Lives of Leonardo, ed. Thomas Frangenberg and Rodney Palmer. Journal of Art Historiography 13 (2015). Full text PDF“Artisanal Epistemologies and the Artless Art of Post-Tridentine Painting.” In The Artwork between Technology and Nature, edited by Camilla Skovbjerg and Jacob Wamberg, 117–133. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2015.“Leonardo da Vinci.” In Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, edited by Michael Kelly, vol. 4, 183–187. Oxford University Press, 2014.“Memory and Place from the Red Center of Australia to the Periphery of Paris: To See the Frame that Blinds Us.” In Imagined Spaces/Places, edited by Saija Isomaa et al., 3–26. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.Book Review of Discourse on Sacred and Profane Images by Gabriele Paleotti, trans. William McCuaig. Renaissance Quarterly 67, no. 2 (Summer 2014): 558–560.