Contemporary art in the early twenty-first century is often discussed as though it were a radically new phenomenon unmoored from history. Yet all works of art were once contemporary to the artist and culture that produced them. In "What Was Contemporary Art?" Richard Meyer reclaims the contemporary from historical amnesia, exploring episodes in the study, exhibition, and reception of early twentieth-century art and visual culture.

Richard Meyer is the Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor in Art History at Stanford University. He is the author, most recently, of What Was Contemporary Art (MIT Press: 2013) and co-editor, with Catherine Lord, of Art and Queer Culture (Phaidon Press: 2013).

Richard Meyer's talk is presented in assocation with the Joan & Martin Goldfarb Summer Institute in Visual Arts, produced by the Graduate Program in Visual Arts and the Graduate Program in Art History and Visual Culture, Faculty of Fine Arts, York University