On September 28, 2012, Richard Meyer, Associate Professor, Art History and Fine Arts Director, The Contemporary Project University of Southern California, delivered his lecture titled "What Was Contemporary Art?: An Introduction". Contemporary art in the early twenty-first century is often discussed as though it were a radically new phenomenon unmoored from history. Yet all works of art were once contemporary to the artist and culture that produced them. Here Richard Meyer reclaims the contemporary from historical amnesia, exploring episodes in the study, exhibition, and reception of early-twentieth-century art and visual culture.