My first encounter with Foteini Vlachou was marked by the qualities that I later found to be definitive of her approach to her life and work: bold intelligence, fearless self-confidence, independence of thought, and absolute commitment to the discipline of art history as a practice of theory that was, in its essence, a worldly, consequential — indeed, political — project. Later, I was to learn of her other great qualities, not least her openness to experience, her warm-hearted generosity, and her committed collegiality. […]
As this book demonstrates, Foteini Vlachou had been narrating the periphery for some time, and brilliantly so.
Terry Smith, from the introduction: “Periphrasis: Provinces, Margins,
Peripheries, Centres — Foteini Vlachou and the decentring of Art History”.
