The Concise History of Art: A Global View: Prehistory to the Present

by Jean Robertson, Deborah Hutton, Cynthia Colburn, m r Harmansah, Eric Kjellgren

Overview

The most versatile survey of art history from around the world, now in a concise edition

Offering the same versatility, richly-illustrated digital resources and pedagogical features of the longer book, The Concise History of Art: A Global View provides a valuable option for shorter courses. Its forty-four chapters, presented in four chronological parts, provide a coherent structure to this briefer coverage. Each part begins with a brief chapter that lays out the major themes of that chronological era. These thematic chapters set the stage for artworks found in the regionally-focused chapters within each part. Because chapters were designed to be taught in any order, or skipped altogether, the book is flexible enough to be assigned in any course, whether it covers the entire globe or focuses on a specific region or regions. This versatile content is augmented with highly-illustrated digital resources for students and instructors, such as the new Check Your Understanding Questions in the Norton Illumine Ebook.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780500297414
Publisher:	Thames & Hudson
Publication date:	07/01/2026
Edition description:	Concise Second Edition
Pages:	656
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Jean Robertson is Chancellor's Professor of Art History Emerita at Indiana University, Herron School of Art and Design, IUPUI, where she received three Indiana University awards for excellence in teaching. She specializes in art history and theory after 1980, viewed in a global context. She served as founding co-director of the Southern Ohio Museum and associate curator of the Columbus (Ohio) Museum of Art.

Deborah Hutton is Professor of Art History in the Department of Art and Art History at The College of New Jersey. Her research explores art made for the Muslim courts of South Asia between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Cynthia S. Colburn is Professor of Art History at Pepperdine University where she has received two awards for excellence in teaching. Her research focuses on the art and archaeology of the ancient Mediterranean, especially the role of bodily adornment and performance in identity construction.

Ömür Harmansah is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. As an archaeologist and an architectural historian, Dr. Harmansah specializes in the art, architecture, and material culture of the ancient Near East.

Eric Kjellgren is a leading scholar of the arts of Oceania. Formerly curator of Oceanic Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and director of the American Museum of Asmat Art (AMAA) and Clinical Faculty in Art History at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, he has worked extensively with contemporary Indigenous Australian artists and done field research in Vanuatu.

Rex Koontz is Professor of Art History at the University of Houston and Consulting Curator of Ancient American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He has written widely on ancient Mexican art, architecture, and aesthetics.

De-nin Lee is Associate Professor of Art History in the department of Visual & Media Arts at Emerson College. Her research in Chinese painting currently focuses on the intersection of landscape and environment.

Henry Luttikhuizen is Professor of Art History Emeritus at Calvin University. He has served as the president of the Midwest Art History Society and the American Association of Netherlandic Studies.

Allison Lee Palmer is Professor of Art History in the School of Visual Arts at the University of Oklahoma, where she has won numerous teaching awards. Her publications include Leonardo da Vinci: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works; Historical Dictionary of Architecture; Historical Dictionary of Romantic Art and Architecture, and the Historical Dictionary of Neoclassical Art and Architecture.

Stacey Sloboda is the Paul H. Tucker Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research focuses particularly on eighteenth-century art, design, and material culture in Britain, with a special interest in cross-cultural exchange and global networks.

Monica Blackmun Visonà is Professor of Art History and Visual Studies and affiliate faculty in African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.