Art Histories (2013–2019)

Art Histories (2013–2019)

Program and Topic

Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices. Kunstgeschichte und Ästhetische Praktiken (2013–2019) is a research and fellowship program which questions and transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries in a transcultural, global horizon. By creating a space of dialog for scholars from all regions, it discusses the potential and contours of a plural history of art. This program invites scholars from Islamic, Asian, African, Australian, European art histories and the art histories of the Americas, as well as scholars from neighboring disciplines such as archaeology and other fields dealing with the history of visual cultures.

Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices analyzes the connectivity of larger historical spaces and investigates artistic phenomena in a comparative approach, experimenting with new methodologies and forms of collaborative research and curatorial practices.
 

Aesthetic Practices: Artifacts in a Transregional Perspective

The concept of »aesthetic practices«, introduced by the program, is an invitation to study artifacts with their biographies as well as processes of transfer and transformation in a transcultural, postcolonial and global perspective. This includes the dynamics of the production and perception of things, images and architectures from the time of their creation to their subsequent apprehensions up to the present, also including their acquistion, display, storage, oppression, reworking or destruction.

With the study of aesthetic practices, the program engages with sociological, genderspecific, historical, legal, religious, technical, philological, linguistic, geographical, ecological and scientific questions or dimensions. It allows us to understand artifacts as actors or participants in specific social and cultural dynamics.
 

Fields of Research

Art Histories and Aesthetic Practicesis structured along four thematic lines: 1. Materiality and Techniques; 2. Mobility, Transfer and Translation; 3. Narratives and Display; 4. Site, Space and Environment. It thus aims to overcome the dichotomy of formal versus contextual approaches towards artifacts or constellations of objects. It promotes the concept of an art-historical ecology and embraces Museum Studies.

Art Histories has no chronological or geographical constraints. Its scholarly environment is designed to enable and encourage both fellows and the wider community to experiment and refine transregional approaches to the history of visual cultures and aesthetic practices.


Partners and Funding

The program is designed as means of intensive collaboration between art historical and research institutions dealing with transcultural questions. Among facilities in Berlin Art Histories primarily cooperates with the Berlin State Museums, the Freie Universität, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Technical University and the ICI Berlin. At the federal level and together with Heidelberg University’s Center for Transcultural Studies the Art Histories program initiated a series of events.
Further cooperation partners throughout Germany and Europe are the German Center for the History of Art Paris (Max Weber Foundation) and the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, München. 

Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as a project at the Forum Transregionale Studien. It is associated to the program »Connecting Art Histories in the Museum (CAHIM)« (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut/ Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) and is directed by Hannah Baader and Gerhard Wolf, both KHI in Florenz – MPI.


Annual Booklets

The annual booklets offer an overview on fellows and activities of the programs  Art Histories and Aesthetic Practicesand CAHIM for the academic years 2013/14 to 2018/19.


Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices & CAHIM – Programs and Fellows 2018–2019

Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices & CAHIM – Programs and Fellows 2016–2017

Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices & CAHIM – Programs and Fellows 2015–2016

Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices & CAHIM – Programs and Fellows 2014–2015

Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices & CAHIM – Programs and Fellows 2013–2014