Besides dealing with objects and images, the art historian inevitably works also with stories. Some are “the facts” that place a piece of art within a context; some are the myths and legends that surround the art: stories about creation and origin or artistic intention and imagination, as well as stories about the history of a work, its influence and importance (or lack of such) over time. Clearly the stories about a work can be important; yet the dangers in selecting and interpreting these are numerous. Moreover, in a field like art history, in which coffee-table volumes and “general interest” works find a ready audience, stories—blindly accepted and occasionally amplified—can easily be pushed to the fore. In his study of the art of the Japanese Zen monastery Daitokuji, Gregory Levine makes it clear that he is a firm believer in stories, as long as they are understood as such and considered critically. The problem, as he sees it, is that Daitokuji’s art history has long been dominated by one set of stories, whose authors have been enamored by the “romance of antiquity” and a narrow canon of “great” works, while limiting themselves to questions of “provenance, formal analysis, and biography.”...