This conference looks at collections of Asian art in and outside Prague from the perspective of the national cultural politics interconnected with individual encounters as well as institutional cultural and diplomatic exchange in Central Europe during the 20th century.
Conference location: National Gallery Prague, Salm Palace at Hradčanské Square
For online registration: collectingasia@ngprague.cz or https://www.ngprague.cz/en/event/3092/collecting-asian-art-in-prague-conference
The focus will lie on collections of Asian art – hereby used as an umbrella term for East Asian, South-East Asian, South Asian, Central Asian and West Asian art. The location includes Prague and its neighbouring cultural centres in Central Europe, thereby allowing a comparison of the mechanisms of collecting and presentation across time and place in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Rather than viewing the collection as connected to a deterministic account of cultural flows through centers and peripheries, the conference will focus on international and transcontinental networks. It will look closely at the role these networks played in establishing the grounds for collecting, displaying and narrating Asian art in Central European museums, which were used as platforms for cultural diplomacy or propaganda. By revisiting historical entanglements and relational comparisons that connect Asia and Central Europe, the conference’s framework will focus on exhibitions, diplomatic exchange, and discursive aspects on art from Asia in the context of cultural politics.
This conference is organised by the Collection of Asian Art at the National Gallery Prague and the Austrian Science Fund’s (FWF) research project “Patterns of Transregional Trails” (P29536-G26).
Symposium Convenors: Markéta Hánová, Yuka Kadoi, Zdenka Klimtová, Simone Wille
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Programme
Day 1 (17 June 2021)
10:00-10:30
Welcome & Introduction by Alicja Knast, Director General, National Gallery Prague
10:30-11:00 Panel 1: Entangled Histories of Cultural Politics, Moderator: Simone Wille
Markéta Hánová, National Gallery Prague
The Birth of the Asian Art Collection at the National Gallery in Prague and Cultural Politics in the Twentieth Century
11:00-11:30 Break
11:30-12:30 Panel 2: In Acitve Dialogue with Asia, Moderator: Markéta Hánová
Yuka Kadoi, Instiute of Art History, University of Vienna, Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
The Ideals of the East: Asian Art and the Crisis of Visual Expression across the Globe, ca. 1900
Tomáš Winter, Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences
Picasso’s Meeting with Buddha
12:30-14:00 Lunch Break
14:00-15:00 Panel 3: Cultural Geographic Re-Orientation–Part 1, Moderator: Yuka Kadoi
Johannes Wieninger, former curator of the Asia collection, MAK–Museum of Applied Arts
Collecting-Searching-Showing. Asian Art in Central Europe: Competing and Networking during the 20th Century
Uta Rahman Steinert, Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Big Gifts to Keep Friendship Warm
15:00-15:30 Break
15:30-17:00 Panel 4: Cultural Geopgraphic Re-Orientation–Part 2, Moderator: Michaela Pejčochová
Petra Kuhlmann-Hodick, Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlung Dresden
Cultural Politics and Transcontinental Networks in 20th Century Central Europe
Dagmar Pospíšilová, National Museum-Náprstek Museum, Prague
Collecting after the Second World War: New Trends in the Museum Collecting Strategy under the Influence of Political Changes in Post-War Czechoslovakia
Agnieszka Kluczewska-Wójcik, Vice-President, Polish Insitute of World Art Studies Warsaw
“I Have Shown You Japan…” Feliks Jasieński and Japanese Art Collections in Poland
Day 2
10:00-11:00 Panel 5: Cultural Diplomacy and Propaganda, Private and Institutional Collecting, Moderator: Markétá Hánová
Michaela Pejčochová, National Gallery Prague
Emissary from the Far East: Vojtěch Chytil and his Significance for the Building of the Collections of Asian Art in Central Europe
Beatrix Mecsi, Art Historian, Associate Professor, ELTE Institute of East Asian Studies
How Did an Ancient Tomb from North Korea Appear in Hungar? The Anak 3 Tomb’s Mural Copies in Context
11:00-11:30 Break
11:30-12:30 Panel 6: Modernism Between Solidarities, Friendships and Intellectual Exchanges, Moderator: Simone Wille
Zdenka Klimtová, National Gallery Prague
Lubor Hájek and Indian Modernist Art
Sanjukta Sunderason, Assistant Professor, Art History, Universtiy of Amsterdam
Freedoms in Motion: Transits of Modern Indian Artists in Central Europe in the 1950s
12:30-14:00 Lunch Break
14:00-15:00 Panel 7: Trans-Modernist Routes Beyond Western Europe, Moderator: Dagmar Pospíšilová
Simone Wille, Art Historian, University of Innsbruck, Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
M. F. Husain’s Drawings in the Collection of the National Gallery Prague: Artistic Form beyond National Representation
Jan Wollner, Academy of Art, Architecture and Design, Prague
Central European Artists in Baghdad
15:00-15:30 Break
15:30-16:30 Panel 8: Asian Art in Central Europe: Past, Present and Future, Moderator: Yuka Kadoi
Matthew Rampley, ERC Principle Investigator, Continuity / Rupture: Art and Architecture in Central Europe 1918-1939, Masary Univ. Brno
Asian Art, Czech Museums and the Manifesto of Decolonization
Partha Mitter, Professor Emeritus, University of Sussex
Decolonising Modernism