Zachęta — National Gallery of Art and the Institute of Art History of the University of Warsaw invite for the symposiumExhibition Histories: New Perspectives.
The international symposium is part of the contemporary reflection on the history of art and architecture exhibitions, undertaken by research institutions, as well as museums and galleries documenting their exhibition activities. The presentations and discussions will focus on three main problems: defining art and architecture exhibitions as a specific medium/form/constellation of works, the contemporary status of the history of exhibitions as a research area located on the borderline of various humanities, as well as focused on methodological perspectives, whose redefinition seems necessary today in the face of various practices of studying archives of modern and contemporary art, or curatorial practices of ‘reconstructing’ old exhibitions.
The exhibition is currently defined as a complex medium, a total work (Gesamtkunstwerk) composed of many other works, a critical form drawing on the experience of architecture in shaping spaces or using models of film narration. As a social and political event, rooted in the traditions of the former Salons, the exhibition makes works of art visible in the public sphere and subject to judgements in the context of artistic criticism.
History of exhibitions is a field of academic research, visible for at least several decades, situated between the history of art (including the history of art criticism) and museology or studies of modern and contemporary visual culture. In the practices of art institutions documenting their activities, the starting point is the calendar of exhibitions. On the one hand, chronology is useful in organising phenomena, and on the other, it provokes questions about its convergence and discrepancy with the periodisations rooted in the history of art and architecture or with ‘turning points’ — such as 1956, 1968 or 1989 — in global and regional political history.
New perspectives is a postulate contained in the title of the symposium to update the existing definitions and interpretative contexts, such as the links between the history of exhibitions and the history of art and architecture, the history of reception or the history of curating. Faced with the multitude of media and practices that make up the constellations of the exhibition, not only does the material and spatial status of the exhibitions, their temporary location or geographical displacements require rethinking, but so does the social range of their reception and the cooperation of curators, artists, designers and other institutional or political decision-makers.
Has the history of exhibitions exhausted its archival and methodological potential, or does it still remain a neglected area within the framework of modern and contemporary art history, architectural history, studies of visual culture? As history of visual forms of cultural exchange in a world of changing borders and political influences, has it made significant revaluations of the geography of art? As a study of social events dependent on a network of institutional links or direct artistic contacts, has it contributed to the questioning of ‘canons’ already crystallised in the history of art and architecture, for example the evaluation of exhibitions according to the criteria of ‘avant-garde’ or ‘modernity’?
Centrala (Simone De Iacobis, Małgorzata Kuciewicz) is a Warsaw studio conducting independent research, re-interpretation and interventions aimed at the renewal of the language of architecture and the city. The studio’s projects are aimed at encouraging a reflection on urban space, as well as exhibitions and architectural designs. With Anna Ptak as curator, De Iacobis and Kuciewicz are authors of the Amplifying Nature exhibition in the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018. They are former fellows of Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart (2015/2016) and Khoj International Artists’ Association in New Delhi (2016). The exhibitions designed by Centrala have included shows of the work of Zofia and Oskar Hansen (MACBA, Barcelona, 2014; Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto, 2015; Yale School of Architecture, 2016; Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2017; Nacionalinė Dailės Galerija, Vilnius, 2017), Wojciech Zamecznik (Archeology of Photography Foundation, Warsaw, 2018), as well as Jacek Damięcki (Zachęta — National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2016). In all these projects, the idea was to use reconstructed design grammars of original exhibition authors.
Assistant Professor in Contemporary Art History and Theory at the Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne. Since 2016, she is on leave as Scientific Advisor at the National Institute for Art History (INHA) where she conducts the research programme 1959–1985, au prisme de la Biennale de Paris (inha.fr/fr/recherche/le-departement-des-etudes-et-de-la-recherche). She holds a PhD from the Université de Montréal and EHESS (Paris), and has been a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. Her research interests span in two main directions: exhibition history and theory, and history of ideas/social art history in Russia and the Soviet Union. These two issues came to cross in her book Usages et utopies. L’exposition dans l’avant-garde russe prérévolutionnaire (1900–1916) (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2015). She has guest-edited the special issue Exposer/Displaying of the scholarly journal Intermédialités (no. 15, 2010). Her recent articles include: ‘The Exhibition as Parergon of Artworks: Russian Avant-Garde Experiments’, in Theater, Garden, Bestiary: A Materialist History of Exhibition (ed. V. Normand and T. Garcia, MIT Press, Sternberg Press, 2019); ‘Ouverture pour cause d’inventaire. Figures et significations de l’exhaustivité en exposition’, in Commissariat engagé / Critical Curating, special issue of RACAR (ed. M. Fraser and A. Ming Wai Jim, vol. 43, no. 2, 2018).
Lecturer in 20th Century Modernism at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where she teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses on the cultural Cold War, countercultures, and experimental art in Eastern Europe and Latin America. She is the author of Antipolitics in Central European Art 1956–1989 (London: IB Tauris, 2014) and Networking the Bloc: Experimental Art in Eastern Europe 1968–1981 (Cambridge Massachusetts, and London: MIT Press, 2018).
Senior Research Advisor at the Institute of Art History in Zagreb. In her work she focuses on the comparative research of post-war modern art in Central and South-Eastern Europe and, in particular, on the relations between art and politics. She is the author and editor of several books (Modern and Contemporary Artists’ Networks. An Inquiry into Digital History of Art and Architecture, 2018; French Artistic Culture and Central-East European Modern Art, 2017; Socialism and Modernity — Art, Culture, Politics 1950–1974, 2013; Modern Art in Croatia 1896–1975, 2012), and has also published a number of articles on art criticism, art, and cultural policies of Socialist Yugoslavia. She has just finished the first series in a research project on digital art history ARTNET — Modern and contemporary artist networks, art groups and collaborative art practices. Organization and communication models of 20th century artists networking practices (2014–2018), and is preparing a follow-up focused on the politics of Non-alignment and practices of cultural exchange between Socialist Yugoslavia and Non-aligned African, Asian, and Latin American countries.
PhD candidate studying History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. He received his BA degree in History of Art and Portuguese from the University of Manchester, followed by an MA degree in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. His current research focuses on the exhibitions of graphic art in the Eastern Bloc and the relationship between the art world and the Cold War politics. He is particularly interested in curatorial strategies developed to negotiate the power split at the Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana (1955), the International Print Biennial in Kraków (1966), and the Tallinn Print Triennial (1968). His project is supervised by Dr Klara Kemp-Welch and is supported by the Arts and HumanitiesResearch Council, UK. Komorowski is an associate editor of immediations: an annual peer-reviewed academic journal in the history of art, published by the Courtauld Institute of Art. He currently focuses on finalising his PhD project and works on an essay on transnational politics at exhibitions of graphic art in the Eastern Bloc which will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2020 in an edited volume titled Exhibitions and Transnational Exchange: Art and Design, Borders and Boundaries from 1945.
PhD, art historian and Americanist, assistant professor at the Department of Art History at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. His professional interests concern American art, theory and methodology of art history; his current research focuses on contemporary ‘life’ of American visual myths in art and visual culture, as well as the relationships between art history, film and film studies. He was a Fulbright Fellow at City University of New York (2007–2008), recipient of Terra Foundation for American Art Summer Residency in France (2008), Terra Travel Grant in the United States (2013) and Kościuszko Foundation Research Grant at University of Southern California in Los Angeles (2019); a member of AICA and Polish Association of Art Historians. He is the author of the book Hopper wirtualny. Obrazy w pamiętającym spojrzeniu [The virtual Hopper: Images in a remembering look](Toruń, 2013) as well as numerous academic articles and book chapters on modern and contemporary art and art theory in journals such as Oxford Art Journal, Kwartalnik Filmowy, Artium Quaestiones, RIHA Journal.
Art historian and curator, since 2017 lives and works in Helsinki, Finland. Curated more than 20 exhibitions, three exhibitions of Frida Kahlo in Russia among them. Previous working experience: Deputy Director of the Contemporary Art Department and Chief Curator for permanent contemporary art collection at the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia (2007–2017). Visiting Professor at the Department of Art History, Historical Faculty, Saint Petersburg State University, Russia (History of the Soviet and contemporary Russian art) (2014). Expertise: art diplomacy, Soviet cultural policy, Western art in the USSR, women in arts. Recent publications:‘The Room of Contemporary Art in the State Hermitage in 1932–1937’, Hermitage Magazine (no. 23, 2016); ‘By Way of Exchange: A Collection of Modern Art Divided between Moscow and Leningrad. 1928–1932’, Hermitage Magazine (no. 23, 2016); ‘From Mexican Artists to the Soviet State: The Story of an Unwanted Gift’, Studia Politica. Romanian Political Science Review (vol. XVII, no. 3, 2017); (together with H. Prignitz-Poda), ‘Frida Kahlo’s Lost Painting, The Wounded Table — A Mystery, IFAR Journal (December 2017); ‘Бастарды культурных связей. Интернациональные художественные контакты СССР в 1920–1950-e годы’ [Bastards of cultural ties: International artistic contacts of the USSR in 1920–1950s] (Moscow: Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, 2019).
PhD is vice-rector for art, research and development at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (AVU), the oldest art academy in the Czech Republic. She is an art historian and curator, as well as director of the Academy’s Research Centre. She has participated in a number of international conferences and plays an active role in various representative bodies of Czech art education and research. From 2014 to 2017, she was vice-rector of study relations at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. She is author of the books A Walk Through Prague: Actions, Performances, Happenings 1949−1989 (VVP AVU, 2017) and Czech Action Art: Happenings, Actions, Events, Land Art, Body Art and Performance Art Behind the Iron Curtain(Karolinum Press, 2015).She lectures on Czech art of the 20th century and is a co-editor of anthologies of manifestos and documents pertaining to Czech art 1939–1989 and 1980–2010. She has published many articles in art journals and catalogues, e.g. Jiří Kovanda: I Haven’t Been Here Yet (Wrocław Contemporary Museum, The Brno House of Arts, 2013),Between the First and Second Modernity 1985–2012 (National Gallery in Prague, 2011),Fluxus East (Berlin: Künstlerhaus Bethanien, 2007) and Action, Word, Movement, Space (Gallery of the City of Prague, 1999). She has curated many exhibitions, including Sometimes in a Skirt. Art of the 1990s (Moravian Gallery in Brno and Gallery of the City of Prague, 2014), The Beginning of the Century 2000–2010 (The West Bohemian Gallery in Pilsen, 2012; Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava, 2013), and Insiders. The Unobtrusive Generation of the Late 1990s (The Brno House of Arts, 2004; Futura, Prague, 2005).
Lives in London. He is a research fellow and editor at Afterall, and teaches at University of the Arts London. His work explores different approaches to artistic research, education and exhibitions, with a particular focus on experimental and collective practices. He is co-editor, with Sylvère Lotringer, of Schizo-Culture: The Event, The Book (Semiotext(e)/MIT Press, 2014) and co-editor, with David Teh, of Artist-to-Artist: Independent Art Festivals in Chiang Mai 1992–98 (Afterall Books, 2018), among other publications.
Associate Professor at the Department of Art Education at Trnava University, Slovakia. She has studied Art History at Comenius University in Bratislava and at the Universität für angewandte Kunst in Vienna (PhD). She has been a curator in the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava and has lectured at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI, USA, and Universität für angewandte Kunst in Vienna. She attended the Getty Summer Institute in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Rochester, USA. In 1999, in 2003 she was Fulbright fellow at RISD Providence and Columbia University, New York, and in 2008 Weiser Fellow at the Department of Museum Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA. In 2010 and 2012 she participatedin the international symposium Art History Meets Art Theory organised by the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, USA, in Brno and Bucharest. She has published several books: Dvojhlasné dejiny umenia / Double Voiced Art History (Bratislava: Petrus, 2002), German version: Zweistimmige Kunstgeschichte (Wien: Praesens Verlag, 2008), Teória a prax múzea umenia / The Theory and Practice of Art Museum (Bratislava: N-CSU, 2002), Efekt múzea: Predmety, praktiky, publikum. Antológia textov anglo-americkej kritickej teórie múzea / The Effect of the Museum: Objects, Practices, Audiences. An Anthology of Anglo-American Theory of Museum (Bratislava: AFAD Press, 2006), Curating ‘Eastern Europe’ and Beyond: Art Histories Through the Exhibition (Köln: Peter Lang; Bratislava: Veda, 2013) and numerous texts on East European Art, critical museology, exhibition history, gender and feminism.
Associate Professor (with tenure) at Yale School of Architecture, where she teaches design, history and theory of architecture. Her scholarly interests cover 20th century European and American art and architecture, art and aesthetic theory, and history of ideas. She is author of Achtung Architektur! Image and Phantasm in Contemporary Austrian Architecture (MIT Press/Graham Foundation, 1996), Alvar Aalto: Architecture, Modernity and Geopolitics (Yale University Press, 2009), which won the Alice Davis Hitchcock Prize given annually by SAH for the best piece of scholarship in the field by a North American writer; and Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment (Yale University Press, 2011). She is also co-editor with Donald Albrecht of Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future (Yale University Press, 2006), which won the Philip Johnson Award, given also by SAH annually for the best exhibition catalogue, and the Bannister Fletcher Award, given by the London Authors Club annually for the best book in art or architecture. Her most recent book Exhibit A: Exhibitions that Transformed Architecture, 1948–2000 was published byPhaidon in 2018. She is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Untimely Modern: Presence of the Past and Other Strange Temporalities. Her scholarly articles and essays have been published by various European journals including AA Files, Daidalos, Finnish Architectural Review, Getty Research Magazine, Log, Perspecta, PIN-UP, and SOM Journal,as well as exhibition catalogues.Her curatorial experience includes working as director of a curatorial research team for Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future (Museum of Finnish Architecture, international tour, 2006); as curator for Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment (Yale School of Architecture Gallery, 2011); as academic advisor for Alvar Aalto: Second Nature (Vitra Design Museum, international tour, 2014–2015); and as curator for Le Carré Bleu: A Legendary Little Magazine from Helsinki, 1958–1961 (Museum of Finnish Architecture, 2016). Her scholarly work has been supported by Getty, the Graham Foundation, the Finnish Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research. She received an MArch from the Tampere University of Technology, Finland, an MED from Yale University, and a PhD from Columbia University.
PhD student at the Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw. Her research focuses on the exchange of exhibitions between Poland and Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. She has participated in the research project History of Exhibitions at the Zachęta — Central Office for Art Exhibitions 1949–1970 (2014–2018). Publications include: ‘Official Exhibitions from Czechoslovakia in Poland as a Tool for Re-Mapping History of Art in Central Eastern Europe during the Cold War’, in Revisiting Heritage (Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, 2019); ‘“The War Brought Us Close and the Peace Will Not Divide Us”’: Exhibitions of Art from Czechoslovakia in Warsaw in the Late 1940s’, Ikonotheka (no. 26, 2016). Conference papers: ‘Exhibition Poland-Czechoslovakia: Centuries of Neighbourhood and Friendship (1978)’, Making and Re-Making Europe. Czech and Slovak Contribution, international conference, The Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto, 2018; ‘Slovak Artists at the Czechoslovak Exhibitions in Postwar Warsaw’, Slovakia in Czechoslovakia 1918–1992: Political, Economic and Cultural Aspects, conference, The Slovak Institute in Warsaw, 2018.
Assistant Professor, Chair of Art Theory in the Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw. Post-doctoral degree (habilitation) in the Department of History, University of Warsaw (2013). She is a graduate of the University of Cambridge (History and Philosophy of Architecture, PhD, 1999; MPhil, 1996). She is the author of Gry sztuki z architekturą. Nowoczesne powinowactwa i współczesne integracje [Art playing with architecture: Modern affinities and contemporary integrations] (2013), Aporie architektury [Aporias of architecture] (2012), Writing on Fragments: Philosophy, Architecture, and the Horizons of Modernity (2009). Edited volumes, e.g. Awangarda w bloku / Avant-garde in the Bloc (2009); publications in the Ashgate Studies in Architecture series, The Journal of Architecture, Montreal Architectural Review, Serbian Architecture Journal. Exhibitions: Transfer: Jarosław Kozakiewicz in the Polish Pavilion for the 10th International Exhibition in Venice (2006), Memory Foundations: Daniel Libeskind in Zachęta — National Gallery of Art (2004). In 2014–2018 she conducted the research project The History of Exhibitions in Zachęta — Central Office for Art Exhibitions 1949–1970 financed by the National Programme for the Development of Humanities (zacheta.art.pl/projekt-badawczy). Her most recent papers on exhibition histories include ‘Heartfield im Zentralbüro für Kunstausstellungen in Warschau (1964)’, kunsttexte.de (2018).
Curator living in London. She has worked as curator since 2005 and since 2016 as Head of Curatorial studies at the Whitechapel Gallery. She has developed an innovative programme of research exhibitions which takes place in the Archive Gallery at the WG. Since 2012 until today Yiakoumaki has devised the NEON Curatorial Exchange & Award, an initiative, which fosters professional relationships for emerging curators, founded by NEON organisation and delivered by the Whitechapel Gallery. Yiakoumaki co-directed the Athens Biennale organisation 2016–2017 and co-curated Waiting for the Barbarians in 2016. Since 2017, she continues her collaboration with the AB as Director of Research and International Networks. Yiakoumaki has conceived a number of successful exhibitions and commissions, including John Latham: Anarchive (2010), Rothko in Britain (2012), Aspen Magazine: 1965–1971 (2012), Black Eyes & Lemonade: Curating Popular Art (2013), Stephen Willats: Concerning Our Present Way of Living (2014), Intellectual Barbarians: The Kibbo Kift Kindred (2015–2016), Imprint 93 (2016), Guerrilla Girls: Is It Even Worse in Europe? (2016), Killed Negatives: Unseen Images of 1930s America (2018), Staging Jackson Pollock (2018) and most recently Queer Spaces: London, 1980s–Today and Sense Sound Sound Sense:Fluxus Music, Scores and Records from the Bonotto Collection (2019). In 2018, Yiakoumaki worked for a major commission to artist Andreas Lolis, funded by NEON Organisation in Athens and realised at the gardens and interior of the archaeological research institution British School at Athens, Greece.
Art historian and literary scientist in Slavonic studies, professor of the history of art with a focus on East, Central East and South East Europe at the University of Leipzig. Her main research interests include memory cultures, art policy, spatial imagination and cultural transfer between East and West Europe, Russian avant-garde art, art in communism, and comics. Further information: gko.uni-leipzig.de/de/kunstgeschichte
Programme:
28.11.2019 (Thursday)
11:00–11:30 Hanna Wróblewska (Zachęta – National Gallery of Art), Gabriela Świtek (University of Warsaw), Welcome and Opening Remarks
SESSION 1
11:30–13:00 Chair: Agnieszka Chmielewska (University of Warsaw)
11:30–12:00 Mária Orišková (Trnava University), Writing Exhibition Histories Now: Genres, Concepts and Possible Approaches
12:00–12:30 Pavlína Morganová (Academy of Fine Arts, Prague), The History of Exhibitions – Exhibitions in History
14:30–15:00 Tanja Zimmermann (University of Leipzig), Translation of Political Language into Aesthetical Practice: Yugoslav Exhibitions and Art Criticism, 1950–70
15:00–15:30 Ljiljana Kolešnik (University of Zagreb), Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of New Tendencies Exhibition Networks, and the International Art Scene of the 1960s
15:30–16:00 Discussion
16:00–16:30 Coffee break
SESSION 3
16:30–18:30 Chair: Weronika Kobylińska-Bunsch (University of Warsaw)
16:30–17:00 Katarina Lopatkina (Helsinki), Effects of the Cold War and International Art Exhibitions in the Soviet Union
17:00–17:30 Filip Lipiński (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań), Exhibitions of American Art in Poland during the Cold War
17:30–18:00 Nayia Yiakoumaki (Whitechapel Gallery, London), Curating Information
18:00–18:30 Discussion
29.11.2019 (Friday)
SESSION 4
11:00–13:00 Chair: Mateusz Salwa (University of Warsaw)
11:00–11:30 Gabriela Świtek, (University of Warsaw), The Factory of Exhibitions: CBWA
11:30–12:00 Klara Kemp-Welch (Courtauld Institute of Art, London), Exhibitions as a Pretext for Social Intercourse in 1970s East-Central Europe
12:00–12:30 Wiktor Komorowski (Courtauld Institute of Art, London), Cold War Exhibitions of Graphic Art: Tallinn Print Triennial (1968) and the Reversed Power of Printed Image / Petra Skarupsky (University of Warsaw), Czechoslovak Exhibitions in Poland: Fighting Art (1967)
12:30–13:00 Discussion
13:00–14:30 Lunch break
SESSION 5
14:30–16:00 Chair: Daniel Muzyczuk (Museum of Art, Łódź)
14:30–15:00 Elitza Dulguerova (INHA/Université de Paris I), Assembling the Incomplete History of a Completed Biennial. A Case Study of the INHA Research Project on the Biennale internationale des jeunes artistes (Paris, 1959–1985)
15:00–15:30 David Morris (Afterall/University of the Arts, London), Is the Exhibition a Festival? Festivals and Worlds, 1977–89
15:30–16:00 Discussion
16:00–16:30 Coffee break
SESSION 6
16:30–18:30 Chair: Tomasz Fudala (Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw)
16:30–17:00 Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen (Yale University, New Haven), Exhibiting (Architectural) Theory: Three Exhibitions by Reima Pietilä
17:00–17:30 Simone De Iacobis, Małgorzata Kuciewicz (Centrala, Warsaw), The Grammar of Exhibitions
17:30–18:30 Concluding discussion
19:00 Fifth edition of the scholarship competition ±∞Zachęta – award ceremony of the Gessel Foundation award for Zachęta.
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