Global Contemporary
What this unit covers
The topics below follow the published Art History course framework for Unit 10. This unit is worth 10.5% of the exam, so budget your time against that rather than against how long the unit takes to teach.
Lessons in this unit
- Identity, Memory & the Body14 min · 3 objectivesExplain how contemporary artists address identity, race, gender, and cultural heritage · Describe how memorials and appropriation reframe history and collective memory · Analyze how photography, silhouette, and installation stage questions of representation
- Materials, Globalization & New Media14 min · 3 objectivesExplain how contemporary artists transform everyday and recycled materials into meaning · Describe how new media and monumental architecture responded to a globalized world · Analyze how artists engage cultural exchange, labor, and the environment
Every term in Unit 10
All 18 terms we publish for Global Contemporary, with definitions. Reading them through is the fastest way to find the ones you cannot define — then drill those in cram mode until you can produce them without the prompt.
- The Bay
- Helen Frankenthaler, 1963, acrylic on canvas. Soak-stain: thinned paint poured into raw canvas so color and support become one thing.
- Narcissus Garden
- Yayoi Kusama, original 1966, mirror balls. Installed uninvited at the Venice Biennale and sold for two dollars each — a critique of the art market performed inside it.
- The Gates
- Christo and Jeanne-Claude, 1979–2005, fabric and steel. Twenty-three miles of saffron gates in Central Park for sixteen days, funded entirely by the artists.
- Vietnam Veterans Memorial
- Maya Lin, 1982, granite. Names in chronological order on polished stone that reflects the viewer. Bitterly opposed at the time for refusing heroic form.
- Horn Players
- Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1983, acrylic and oil paintstick. Neo-Expressionism with text as image, honoring Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.
- Summer Trees
- Song Su-nam, 1983, ink on paper. Traditional literati ink brought into a Western abstract idiom — the Sumukhwa movement.
- Androgyne III
- Magdalena Abakanowicz, 1985, burlap, resin, wood and nails. A hollow headless figure — the body as a shell, made by a sculptor who lived through occupation.
- A Book from the Sky
- Xu Bing, 1987–1991, woodblock-printed volumes. Thousands of invented characters that look entirely legible and mean nothing — an assault on the authority of the printed word.
- Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People)
- Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, 1992, oil and mixed media. A canoe hung with sports memorabilia using Indian imagery, priced against the theft of a continent.
- Earth's Creation
- Emily Kame Kngwarreye, 1994, synthetic polymer on canvas. Aboriginal Australian; dump-dot technique at mural scale, tied to her country at Alhalkere.
- Rebellious Silence, Women of Allah
- Shirin Neshat, 1994, ink on photograph. Farsi calligraphy across a face bisected by a rifle barrel — refusing the single reading Western audiences want.
- En la Barbería no se Llora
- Pepón Osorio, 1994, mixed-media installation. A barbershop saturated with objects, examining Puerto Rican masculinity in a space where it is performed.
- Pisupo Lua Afe (Corned Beef 2000)
- Michel Tuffery, 1994, flattened cans. A bull built from corned-beef tins — imported food and its health consequences in the Pacific.
- Electronic Superhighway
- Nam June Paik, 1995, mixed media with neon and video. The United States mapped in televisions, each state playing its own footage.
- The Crossing
- Bill Viola, 1996, video/sound installation. Two projections, fire and water, destroying the same figure — slow motion turning video into a devotional object.
- Darkytown Rebellion
- Kara Walker, 2001, cut paper and projection. Antebellum silhouettes staging violence; the viewer's own shadow joins the scene, which is the point.
- Preying Mantra
- Wangechi Mutu, 2006, mixed media on Mylar. Collaged bodies from fashion and ethnographic sources, confronting how Black women's bodies are pictured.
- Stadia II
- Julie Mehretu, 2004, ink and acrylic on canvas. Layered architectural drawing, flags and marks — global spectacle rendered as controlled chaos.
What examiners penalize here
- For Global Contemporary works, lead with the **idea and context**: identity, colonialism, gender, memory, globalization. Shonibare’s "African" fabric is really European-made; Walker’s pretty silhouettes depict atrocity. Naming the concept a work critiques — and how its form delivers that critique — is the heart of the analysis AP wants here.
Practice Art History
Our practice bank is drawn from across the whole course rather than filtered to one unit, which is closer to how the exam asks anyway — it will not tell you which unit a question is testing.
Questions about this unit
How much of the AP Art History exam is Unit 10?
Unit 10, Global Contemporary, is worth 10.5% of the Art History multiple-choice section according to the published course framework. Across all 10 units that makes it one of the lighter units, so it is not where a review phase should start.
What topics are covered in Art History Unit 10?
Global Contemporary covers Postmodernism, Installation, New media and Identity. We publish 18 terms with definitions for this unit, all of them on this page.
How should I study Art History Unit 10?
Read the 2 lessons below first — about 30 minutes — then drill the 18 terms in cram mode until you can produce each definition from memory rather than just recognize it. Recognition is what makes a unit feel finished when it is not. Finish with practice questions and read the explanation for every one you get right by elimination as well as the ones you miss.
All 10 units of AP Art History
Unit names, topics and exam weights follow the published College Board course framework for AP Art History. AP® is a trademark registered by the College Board, which does not endorse this site.