The keyword of ecology today stands like no other paradigmatic for the perception of urgency, action and commitment. The demands for commitment as a new attitude are negotiated both in the practice of art and validated in dealing with it. The entanglement between production and reception is complex and mutually charged, not least through the joint participation in a discourse that is less characterized by the specificity of the individual areas and more by interdisciplinary models of thought. So my short contribution does not want to understand »commitment« and »ecology« as terms of demarcation, but to discuss their paradigmatic potential in the sense of a challenge. The questions about the consequences of the "ecological imperative" for the self-understanding of culture and about the revisions of art historical models and curatorial practice seem more exciting than a normative codification. The pathetic tone that sounds in such a formulation is certainly one of the problems of a reflection that refers to larger contexts, even to planetary orders and geological epochs (»deep time«), and wants to create new world interpretations beyond the presence of humans. Art history can also be completely dazed by so many demands in the diligent reception of philosophical lines of thought.In the following, I would like to pick out individual »attitudes« in our subject, which I am convinced illustrate the challenges, opportunities and difficulties of art history as a discipline in the humanities. Art history shows itself both as a historical science and in dialogue with current artistic demands and strategies.