The Rise and Fall of the ‘clerks’”: British Art History, 1950-1970.

This article analyses the debates about the professionalisation of the study of British art between about 1950 and 1970, focusing predominantly on the activities of the Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art, and its attempts to establish “foundations” for art history as an academic discipline in Britain. Art history in post-war Britain is commonly regarded as uninspiringly positivist. This article aims to situate this “pathos of positivism” (Lorraine Daston) within broader institutional debates: much of what is commonly regarded as a conservative streak in British art writing is better understood as an active attempt at “boundary-work” (Thomas Gieryn), carving out a niche for the discipline by contrasting it on the one hand with continental versions of art history, while aligning it on the other hand with similarly positivist and data-driven tendencies in British historical studies. In doing so, the article attempts to re-evaluate the history of British art history on its own terms.