Art historians must look at art being made now from an historical perspective, and not simply label it "contemporary art." So said Terry Smith, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the University of Pittsburgh, speaking "On Our Contemporaneity" April 26 in Goldwin Smith Hall as part of the College of Arts and Sciences Humanities Lecture series.

"Most people think of the contemporary as simply meaning 'being of the present' or the 'now,'" said Smith. But as the multiple definitions of the word "contemporary" in English demonstrate, the "now" is actually just one aspect of the temporal meaning of "contemporary."

Smith described different views of being in time, such as that of the utopians, for whom he said, "the present is just a flicker, an obstacle on the way to the future," and of indigenous peoples, who have "a very long term sense of the unfolding of what we would call time."

In an interview, Smith pointed to recent research by cognitive scientists that found humans can distinguish sights and sounds within milliseconds, but also can distinguish longer periods, mirroring the dictionary definitions of "contemporary" that describe different ways of being in time. He quoted a New Yorker magazine article that likened our time sense to "the cerebral equivalent of a sundial, an hourglass and an atomic clock."

Temporality, however, is just one of the currents that shape contemporaneity, said Smith, who illustrated his points with numerous slides of art works. Geopolitics and planetarity (the relationship that humans have with the Earth) also affect how societies organize themselves and how individuals experience the world. But none of these forces by themselves -- the disintegration of governments, the threat of climate change or social inequities -- are sufficient to define contemporaenity; it arises from their confluence as well as the antinomies between them.

"The first place I saw these patterns of experience was of course in the visual arts, because that's where I spend my life and time. But I also noticed them in philosophy and in thinking about culture," said Smith. "Defining contemporaneity is really an effort to give stronger, clearer definitions to these patterns."

During the question-and-answer period, history of art chair Shirley Samuels commented that Smith offered "a very optimistic sense that artists can organize the future in the present in such a way that by engaging their differences, they can imagine the future."

Smith's current project, in collaboration with colleagues in Pittsburgh, is an ambitious attempt to bring together a huge group of interdisciplinary thinkers to try to "imagine very big world pictures over long periods of time." The material result will be an interactive exhibit based on "iCinema," a display that creates immersive environments through digital projection of about 2,000 interactive images. "Figures of connectivity will hopefully emerge that will be a better description of what it means to be on the planet than what we have now," said Smith.

The Arts and Sciences Humanities Lectures are presented with support from the Office of the President and the College of Arts and Sciences.

Linda B. Glaser is a staff writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.