“Public history” is a well-established and familiar sub-discipline to students of history. Many universities offer degrees and concentrations in this or a related field. Historians who train in public scholarship expect to pursue work in places where a relatively broad audience encounters the past, including national parks and monuments, historic houses, and museums. As public historians, they pursue research and author historical materials. They may be involved in curating exhibitions, directing educational programs, and advocating for historic preservation, among other, more general administrative duties. Fundamentally, their job is to interpret history for a range of audiences, and to mediate between the academy and the public. As an art historian and curator who works in museums and thinks about them in an academic setting, I have recently begun to wonder how this professional model compares to the structure of my own discipline. A 1999 conference at the Clark Art Institute on “The Two Art Histories” attested to a gap between the academy and the museum, one that is both wide and strongly felt.[1] At times, this gap provokes some strange points of resentment. A respected medievalist recently remarked to me, in a resigned tone, that more people came across Byzantine art...