ANN: Wilhelm von Bode & the Art Trade in the Late 19th Century – Lecture by Joanna Smalcerz (Polish Center for Historical Research, Berlin – 18 April 2023, 18:00 CEST)


The Polish Center for Historical Research, Berlin invites you to the second seminar in the “Klaus Zernack Colloquium 2023“ series, “Wilhelm von Bode: The Entanglement of Art Historical Scholarship, Connoisseurship & the Art Trade in the Late 19th Century“. The career and professional success of Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929) relied on the business of 19th-century connoisseurship. Like other art historians of the time involved in the commerce of art, he was entangled in the reciprocal dynamics and interdependencies of the nascent discipline of art history, connoisseurship and the art trade.

In her presentation Dr Joanna Smalcerz (University of Warsaw/University of Bern) will focus on the rise of connoisseurship and its tight intertwinement with the art trade. She will seek to expose the modus operandi of Bode’s strategic participation in the art market in order to demonstrate his complex agency within the art marketplace of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Another focus will be on Bode’s multi-faceted and frequently conflicting roles within the Western marketplace of the time. Bode emerges as a subject of study which morphs into an archaeology of the strategic bonds continuously forged by curators with collectors, art dealers and art scholars up to the present day, while demonstrating the particular consequences of these interconnections on the birth of the art historical canon in the late 19th century.

The commentary to the presentation will be delivered by Prof. Thomas W. Gaehtgens (Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles/Free University in Berlin). Dr Milena Woźniak-Koch (CBH PAN) will moderate the seminar.

The event will be held in English.

Please confirm your participation at: info@cbh.pan.pl.

You can also watch the seminar live:

– on Zoom, registration: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kA6J8WigQvqYzAaoXXoX9g

– on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UClwPse-0tp1iAwNl06nh1Ug.