The year 1873 marked a significant turning point for art history as a scientific discipline and for museology: It was the year the First Art History Congress took place in Vienna—initiated by the progressive founding director of the MAK, Rudolf von Eitelberger—as well as the Vienna World’s Fair.
The Vienna World’s Fair, as the first World’s Fair in the German-speaking region, was particularly focused on a new internationalism with an eye towards the “East.” Through diplomatic channels, significantly more nations outside of Europe were recruited for the Vienna show than for past World’s Fairs (such as in Paris and London). The message was to present Austria-Hungary as a trade-political and cultural mediator between “East and West” in a large international context.

The First Art History Congress was held in the premises of the library of today’s MAK, simultaneously to the Vienna World’s Fair. For the first time, it brought together numerous art historians from museums and universities in the German-speaking region, and it is considered an important step in establishing art history as an independent academic subject. During the four-day gathering, practical and methodological questions which were of great relevance for both teaching and research as well as for museum work were discussed.

Titled (RE-)FRAMING 1873: The Vienna World’s Fair and the First Art History Congress, the first part of the symposium explores how critical aspects were negotiated at the two historical events of 1873: internationality, the mode of national representation, the institutionalization of the subject of art history, and the definition of the fields of activity of museums. NEGOTIATING ART HISTORIES: International Art at the Vienna World’s Fair discusses the presentation of art from “the Orient” and “Islam,” of art from South America, China, and Japan, while also shedding light on the collection strategy of the Museum of Art and Industry at the Vienna World’s Fair.
 
GLOBAL FRAMES: New Perspectives on Art History between the Cultures focuses on the present and discusses how art history and museums can position and define themselves beyond their hierarchization in a new relationship to the global “world” in times of cultural diversity. As a conclusion to the symposium, the panel discussion EXPANDED MUSEUM: Perspectives and Ideas provides impulses for a broader concept of museums that manifests itself in content, architecture, and society.
 
The symposium looks at connections between historical perspectives and contemporary cultural-philosophical and postcolonial positions of the present to address the historical and conceptual conditions of art history as an originally Western scientific narrative and to contextualize museums as part of it.

PROGRAM

10 am 
Doors Open

10.30 am
Welcome

10.40 am      
(RE-)FRAMING 1873: The Vienna World’s Fair and the First Art History Congress

Matthew Rampley, Professor, Department of Art History, Masaryk University, Brno:
The Art History Congress in 1873: Significance and Consequences (EN)
 
Oliver Rathkolb, Professor, Department of Contemporary History, University of Vienna:
Die Wiener Weltausstellung 1873 zwischen „Krähwinkelei“, Turboglobalisierung und dem Beginn des nervösen Zeitalters [The 1873 Vienna World’s Fair between Narrow-Mindedness, Turbo-Globalization, and the Beginning of the Nervous Era] (DE)
 
Chair: Kathrin Pokorny-Nagel, Head, Library and Works on Paper Collection, MAK

Noon
Lunch Break

1 pm            
GLOBAL FRAMES: New Perspectives on Art History between the Cultures
Keynotes Part 1

Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries, London:
Édouard Glissant for Exhibition-Making in the 21st Century (EN)
 
Chair: Marlies Wirth, Curator, Digital Culture and Design Collection, MAK
 
1.35 pm   
Break
 
2 pm         
NEGOTIATING ART HISTORIES: International Art at the Vienna World’s Fair
 
2–3.30 pm
Panel 1

Christina Baird, Independent Scholar, Vienna:
E.C. Bowra (1841–1874) and the Chinese Submission to the Vienna Exhibition, 1873 (EN)
 
Sven Schuster, Professor of History, Del Rosario University, Bogotá:
Brasilien und Lateinamerika auf der Weltausstellung [Brazil and Latin America at the World’s Fair] (DE) (via Zoom)
 
Mio Wakita-Elis, Curator, Asia Collection, MAK:
Keramik aus Japan auf der Wiener Weltausstellung: Die Sammlungsstrategie des Museums für Kunst und Industrie innerhalb der japanisch-mitteleuropäischen Diskurse [Ceramics from Japan at the Vienna World’s Fair: The Collection Strategy of the Museum of Art and Industry within the Japanese-Central European Discourse] (DE)
 
Chair: Lukas Nickel, Professor, Department of Art History, University of Vienna
 
3.30 pm
Break
 
4–5.30 pm
Panel 2

Markus Ritter, Professor, Department of Art History, University of Vienna:
What was ‚Islamic‘ and ‚Oriental‘ Art, c. 1873? (DE)
 
Nilay Özlü, Professor, Department of Architecture, Istanbul Technical University:
Objects of the Sultan: The Ottoman Treasury Pavilion in Vienna (EN)
 
Johannes Wieninger, Independent Scholar and former Curator, Asia Collection, MAK:
Die Wiener Weltausstellung und das Orientalische Museum [The Vienna World’s Fair and the Oriental Museum] (DE)
 
Chair: Anja Grebe, Professor, Department for Arts and Cultural Studies, University for Continuing Education Krems – Danube University
 
5.30 pm      
Break
 
6 pm            
GLOBAL FRAMES: New Perspectives on Art History between the Cultures
Keynotes Part 2

Carolin Overhoff Ferreira, Professor, Department of Art History, Federal University of São Paulo: Dekolonialität als Neudefinition der Moderne [Decoloniality as a Redefinition of Modernity] (DE)
 
Susanne Titz, Director, Abteiberg Museum, Mönchengladbach:
Framing Theories. Das Museum der Einrahmungen neu denken [Framing Theories: Rethinking the Museum of Framings] (DE)
 
Wilfried Kuehn, Partner at the architecture firm Kuehn Malvezzi, Curator and Author, Professor of Spatial Design, TU Vienna
dis/play (DE)

Chair: Marlies Wirth, Curator, Digital Culture and Design Collection, MAK
 
7–7.45 pm
EXPANDED MUSEUM: Perspectives and Ideas
Panel Discussion

Carolin Overhoff Ferreira, Professor, Department of Art History, Federal University of São Paulo

Susanne Titz, Director, Abteiberg Museum, Mönchengladbach

Wilfried Kuehn, Partner at the architecture firm Kuehn Malvezzi, Curator and Author, Professor of Spatial Design, TU Vienna
 
Host: Julienne Lorz, Professor, Expanded Museum Studies, University of Applied Arts, Vienna

PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Free admission.
Registration required.
Entrance: Weiskirchnerstraße 3 (opposite Stadtpark)

DOWNLOAD ABSTRACTS