The 2026 AAH conference will be hosted in partnership with the History of Art department at the University of Cambridge in April.

The Association for Art History’s Annual Conference brings together international research and critical debate about art history and visual culture. A key annual event, the conference is an opportunity to stay up to date with new research, hear leading keynote speakers, broaden networks, and exchange ideas.

With over 108 sessions and 500 papers, a full programme of tours, visits and workshops, and recreational activities, this will be our largest ever conference.

KEYNOTES
We are delighted to announce our three keynote speakers for 2026:

Wednesday 8 April:
Craft Matters: An autobiographical journey
Tanya Harrod, Independent Design Historian
Sponsored by: The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Thursday 9 April:
Objects in Motion: Capturing the Libretto of Louis of Anjou and its Siblings
Susie Nash, Courtauld
Sponsored by: International Center of Medieval Art

Friday 10 April:
Art History and the (postcolonial) Museum
Chika Okeke-Agulu, Princeton University

For the full programme and further information please visit the conference website:
https://forarthistory.org.uk/conference/2026-art-history-annual-conference/

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2026 Programme At A Glance
[Programme subject to change, last updated: 2 February 2026]

Wednesday 8 April
All Day

08.30-onwards: Registration

10.00-17.30: Bookfair

10.00-12.00: Morning Sessions

AI and the Artworld: Art History and the Generative Imagination
Art History Warmed up?
Art Writing: Beyond the Crisis?
Beyond Barbie: Queer, Crip, Feminist and Anti-Racist Approaches to Pink
Carrying Across: Translation as Material Practice in the Pre-/Early Modern World
Connecting Ecocritical Art Histories within the Discipline(s) (pt.1)
Decolonising Art History – Continuing the Conversation (pt.1)
Eighteenth-Century Italian Art and Artists in Global Contexts
Empire, Art, and Nature: Specimens and their Proxies
Esotericism, Creativity, and Artistic Practice
Facing the Mongol Empire: The Role of Art History (pt.1)
Gender and South Asian Visual Cultures in the Twentieth Century
Local Studies (pt.1)
Questioning the Illusion/Materiality Polemics in a Transcultural Art History
Reimagining the fragment (pt.1)
Rethinking History in Modernism (pt.1)
Sound, Vision, and the Spatial Imagination
Uncovering the Victorian Art-Workman (session in the morning and visits to David Parr house in the afternoon)
Where Photography Happened: Sites of Photographic Experimentation and Pedagogy, 1950–1980
Word Acts: Text in Visual Art at the Intersection of Histories and Geographies

12:00 – 13:00: Lunch

13.00-15.00: Afternoon Sessions

Art History: Facts and Fiction?
Art is Dead: Long Live the Artist – Creativity in the Times of AI
Concepts of Nature in German Art at the Intersection of Colonialism, Lebensreform, and Evolutionary Theory
Confounding Images: Frustration as Art Historical Method
Connecting Ecocritical Art Histories beyond Academia (pt.2)
Contemporary Proto-Feminisms: Reclaiming Historical Femininity in Practice and Criticism
Critique, Homage, Iconoclasm? The reuse of 19th-Century Photography in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture
Decolonising Art History – Continuing the Conversation (pt.2)
Early Modern Caribbean Material Culture, c.1600-1830
Facing the Mongol Empire: The Role of Art History (pt 2.)
Horizontal Art History in Global Context: East Central Europe in the Present
How British is British Surrealism, 1936-2026?
Intermedia Dialogues in Art and Architecture
Local Studies (pt 2.)
Performing Otherness in Contemporary Art
Reforms, revivals and returns revisited
Reimagining the fragment (pt.2)
Rethinking History in Modernism (pt.2)
Technical Art History: Integrating Art History with Scientific Inquiry
Visual Art and South Asian Textiles

15:00-15:30: Break

15.30-17.00: Workshops, Tours and Events

17.15-18.45: Keynote Speeches

19.30-21.00: Drinks Reception

Thursday 9 April
All Day

08.30-onwards: Registration

10.00-17.30: Bookfair

10.00-12.00: Morning Sessions

A Call to Action: Transnational Artistic Solidarities and Decolonial Alliances, 1960s–1970s (pt.1)
AI in the Art History Classroom
Always Connect? Relational Paradigms in Art History
Archive as Method: Rewriting the Self in East Asian Art Practices
Blue Aesthetics: Art and Aquatic Life
Curating as Pedagogy (pt.1)
Every Fiber of Our Being: Textile Traditions, Ethnonationalism, and Exclusion
Feminism in the Art Institution
Feminism, Art, and Politics: Critical Engagements with Heresies (1977-1993)
Materiality of the Unseen in the Long Nineteenth Century
Reassessing Heroism in Medieval Art
The Contemporary Turn in Historical Collections: Postcolonial Geographies
The Essay Film, Then and Now
The History of Museum Access
The Proclivities of Pleasure in Early Modern Art
This Must Be The Place: Beyond local/global binaries in ecocritical art history
Trans (In)visibility in Medieval and Early Modern Visual Cultures
Transcultural Abstraction, Colonial Histories
Transcultural Mobilities: People, Artifacts, Materials, 1300-1750 (pt.1)
Unstable Monuments. Nation, States, Spaces, and Conflicts in Public Sculpture, 1811-1947

12.00-13.00: Lunch

13.00-15.00: Afternoon Sessions

A Call to Action: Transnational Artistic Solidarities and Decolonial Alliances, 1960s–1970s (pt.2)
Animal Representation in the Global Middle Ages: Bridging the Natural and Social Worlds
Artistic Exchanges during the Global Cold War: Eastern Bloc, Northern Africa and West Asia
British Art, Incorporated
Curating as Pedagogy (pt.2)
Curating with AI: Risks and Opportunities
Eco-art-histories: Plants and Paintings in the Arts of Asia
Embracing the World: East European Women Art Collectors as Social Influencers (19th-21st Century)
Errors, Glitches, Blurs: The Art of Failure
Irish Women Artists and their International Networks, 1870 – Present
Jews and Heritage in Twentieth-Century Britain: Collections, Aesthetics, Narratives
Laughing From all Our Mouths
Looking to Learn: The Power of Observation
Mapping Human and Non-Human Migration in Contemporary Art
Premodern Portraits: New Approaches to Identity and Patronage
Private Collecting into Public Collection
Re-contextualising Steles: Media, Memory, and Materiality
Situated Feminisms: Rethinking Art, Gender, and History in China
Transcultural Mobilities: People, Artifacts, Materials, 1300-1750 (pt.2)
Victorian Art after Trans Studies

15:00-15:30: Break

15.30-17.00: Workshops, Tours and Events

17.15-18.45: Keynote Speeches

19.30-21.00: Drinks Reception

Friday 10 April

09.00-16.30: Registration

10.00-14.30: Bookfair

10.00-12.00: Morning Sessions

Archiving the Women Artist: Historiographic Negotiations in the Global South
Britishness, Empire & the Picturesque
Chinatowns in Global Imagination
Co-creation: Human and non-human making processes and their environmental entanglements
Creative Resistance: Responding to Protracted Violence Through Art
Early Modern Artists’ Signatures
Fashionability and the Art Market
Feminist Art History Now (pt.1)
How to Research Tapestries
Images and Pictures
Indigenous Subversions: Counter/Retrocolonization in Artistic Practice
Islands in Relation: Art, Memory, and Environment
Landscapes of Extraction: Colonial and Industrial Histories of British Landscapes, 1700-1900 (pt.1)
Patterning Worlds: Non-Figurative Art in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Print in the Expanded Field
Prototypes: Artist Information Strategies
Reimagining the Posthuman Body in the Digital Age
The Internationalisation of Spanish and Latin American Art in the Long Nineteenth Century
This was Tomorrow: Reframing Pop
Transparent Flesh: Reimagining the Medical Image in Contemporary Art

12.00-13.30: Keynote Speeches

13.30-14.30: Lunch & Refreshments

14.30-16.30: Afternoon Sessions:

Africa, Art History, and the (University) Museum: approaches to object-led teaching and display
Aqueous Worlds: Art, Fluidity and Empire c.1600-1900
Art, Activism, and Power in the Contemporary Post-Soviet Space
At the Service of Art: Domestic Servants and Their Artists
Book-objects: Bookness and artmaking
Dis-ease: Art, Illness, and Abstraction
Embodied Histories, Dislocated Objects: Creative Practice and the Legacies of Empire in South Asia and its Diasporas
Environmental Approaches to the Eastern Mediterranean Landscape
Feminist Art History Now (pt. 2)
Jungle Ruins and Sacred Forests: Ecologies of the Forgotten Monument
Landscapes of Extraction: Colonial and Industrial Histories of British Landscapes, 1700-1900 (pt 2.)
Narrative Plasterwork in the Early Modern World
Recentering Central Asia in Postwar Art Exchange
Reclaiming Craft: Decolonial Perspectives on Heritage and Innovation in the Islamic World
South American Biennials: Dispositifs of Resistance and Diplomacy
The Epic as Form in Modern and Contemporary Art
The Product Worlds of Art
Wildfires in Contemporary Art: New Directions for Eco-Aesthetics
Women in printing before 1800
16.30: Conference ends