Art history as we know it is regarded by many actors in the art world as obsolete. Today, it seems contemporaneity rules in a “post-historical” situation, where art history seems deprived of a future. Some two decades or more after the heyday of postmodernism, it is time to reconsider what kinds of historical claims can still be made for the field of art history and visual studies. If the very word “history” is laden with antiquated expectations of “objectivity” as the discipline goes about its customary business of putting objects back into their chronological place, then the concept of temporality opens up fresh approaches to the temporal organization of the discipline. What if visual art is in a position to explain and expand history rather than vice versa? What if the artwork grounds history? What if the work does not necessarily belong to its own time, but was born prematurely or belatedly, disjointed with respect to a chronological axis? Art historical approaches are still possible, indeed needed, but they do look a little different from those to which we have become accustomed.