Art history timeline atlas

Networked, Public And Planetary Art Art History

Today art moves through galleries, streets, platforms, archives, code, climate data, communities and public conflict.

Era scope

Date range: c. 1960-today

Use the entries below as overlapping study routes rather than a single story of linear progress.

• Installation And Social Practice

  Contemporary art often builds situations rather than objects: rooms, meals, conversations, workshops, archives and civic encounters.

• Street Art And Public Voice

  Street art uses public space as studio, gallery, argument and risk, turning walls, trains, posters and sidewalks into contested sites of visibility.

• Identity, Memory And Archive

  Many contemporary artists use archives, bodies and memory to expose how history is recorded, damaged, staged and repaired.

• Digital, Internet And Generative Art

  Digital art treats code, networks, data, screens and algorithms as artistic material.

• Climate And Planetary Art

  Climate art asks what art can do when landscape is no longer a backdrop but a damaged system we inhabit.

• Contemporary African Networks And Afrofuturism

  Contemporary African and diaspora artists work through migration, material reuse, futurity, memory, fashion, photography and global exhibition networks.

• Indigenous Contemporary Art And Sovereignty

  Indigenous contemporary art links sovereignty, land, language, ceremony, archive and public memory through new and inherited materials.