Art History Research Lecture: Dr Cristian Nae 'The Alter-Globalist Turn: From Art History to Exhibition Histories in Central and Eastern Europe'

Join us on the 27 September at 4pm in School 2 of St Salvator's Quad for ‘The Alter-Globalist Turn: From Art History to Exhibition Histories in Central and Eastern Europe'.

For the past decade, exhibition histories have become increasingly important for art history written in and about Central and Eastern Europe. Reviewing the historiography of exhibition histories in the region, one may easily see how the latter responded to the need not only to reenter the conversations of a globalizing discipline, decentering a western-based perspective on modernism, but also to react and adjust to the postcolonial and decolonial conversations of art history.

Two major lines of inquiry are opening in this respect. What has the exhibition as a particular art historical object of study revealed about the desires and blind spots of regional and local art historiographies? How did exhibition histories incorporate critical art history, and how did research exhibitions supplement missing art historical knowledge? In short, what did art history have to learn from its recent turn towards exhibition histories of and during socialism and how it can continue to learn from curatorial discourses and research methodologies? The second line of inquiry regards the inscription of exhibition histories in the global canon of curatorial and exhibition studies. Are there any meaningful particularities of exhibitions taking place in socialist Europe that might challenge and initiate a dialogue with other types of exhibition practices and histories on a global scale? I contend that the still unexplored potential of exhibition histories in socialism lies in practicing what Polish art historian Piotr Piotrowski has advocated as “alter-globalist” art history: an art history intended to expose “repressive practices directed towards the margins, peripheries both geographically and topographically (that is, within certain localities).”

Wine reception to follow at 79 North Street.