CFP: Art History in East-Central Europe

Art History on the Disciplinary Map in East-Central Europe,
18-19 November 2010, Brno, Czech Republic

The Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusettes, USA, in collaboration with Masaryk University and the Moravian Gallery in Brno, the Czech Republic, invite submissions to participate in the seminar, Art History on the Disciplinary Map in East-Central Europe, 18 -19 November 2010, to be held in Brno, Czech Republic.

This is the second in a series of seminars taking place in the region between 2010 and 2011 as part of Research and Academic Program’s East-Central Europe initiative, Unfolding Narratives: Art Histories in East-Central Europe after 1989, generously funded by the Andrew. W. Mellon Foundation with additional support from the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories initiative.

The Brno seminar will deal with the following topics:
• Art History in the Humanities: What is the place of art history in the humanities? What is its status compared to other disciplines for example, literature, history, or philosophy within the humanities? How does it relate to other visual disciplines and/or to the challenges of the expanding boundaries of art history such as, visual studies, for example?
• Art History and Theory: What is the status of “theory” in art history? To what extent does it underpin art historical work in the East-Central European context?
• Art History and its Institutions: How does art history live within the academy, the museum, and the art market today? What are the pressures and challenges of art history within these settings? Are there other serious contexts – exhibitions, biennials, transregional projects, publications, internet – in which art history is being shaped?
• Art History’s Blind Spots: What is being suppressed or avoided in research, in teaching, in curricula, in writing, and in exhibitions? What is the relationship between “local” art histories and a “global” discipline of art history? How are local art histories being constrained by the historical traditions of German Kunstwissenschaft, Anglo-American academic traditions, and the global thrust of the contemporary discipline? Do local practices and traditions offer some viable alternatives/challenges to the global discipline?

The format for the seminar is a combination of paper presentations and roundtable discussions that will take place over 2 days in Brno. Travel, accommodation, and meals for duration of the seminar will be provided by the organizers. We invite you to submit a proposal for a paper (of no more than 10 pages) that speaks to one of the above-mentioned topics.

Submission procedure:
Please submit a 300 word abstract by 15 June 2010 to Dr. Ladislav Kesner at lkesner (at) cultropa (dot) cz and Natasha Becker at nbecker (at) clarkart (dot) edu. The deadline for the submission of the final paper is 30 September 2010.

Dr. Ladislav Kesner
Masaryk University
Faculty of Arts
Department of the History of Art
312 Veveří 470/28, 602 00 Brno
Czech Republic
+420 549 49 4095