Infrastructures of Trading and Transferring Art since 1900.

Although art market studies as an academic field has become increasingly popular in the last decade, there has been little research that critically examines the actors, places, rules, and structures of this system. This workshop, facilitated by Gregor Langfeld, Kristóf Nagy, and Lynn Rother, aims to explore the infrastructures through which artworks have been produced and exchanged for goods, money, services, and reputation since 1900. Presentations touch on transnational perspectives, uneven exchanges, differences or systems in centres and peripheries, dynamics of innovation and “belatedness,” selection and canon formation, including aspects of gender, diversity, and discrimination. The workshop is part of the research initiative (Un)mapping Infrastructures: Transnational Perspectives on Modern Art.

Program:

Wednesday, 26 June

16:30–18:00 Archives Visits with Károly Tóth, Deputy Director
for Archives and Documentation, KEMKI

18:00–18:30: Welcoming the Participants and Opening Remarks
by Dávid Fehér, PhD, (Director of KEMKI, Budapest),
Zsolt Petrányi, PhD, (Deputy Director for Research, Museum of Fine Arts,Budapest) and by the organizers:
Prof. Dr. Gregor M. Langfeld (University of Amsterdam/Open University),
Kristóf Nagy (KEMKI/Central European University) and
Prof. Dr. Lynn Rother (Leuphana University)

19:30–20:30: Keynote Lecture
Artworks as Person-Objects: Between Private Commodities
Nathalie Heinich and National Heritage

Thursday, June 27

Panel I “Selling Outside of Capitalism” (9:30–11:30)

Jakub Banasiak: Foundation in the Foksal Gallery: Foksal Gallery Foundation as an Agent of Pro-art Market Modernization during the Post-Communist Transition

Réka Deim: Artéria Gallery: An Independent Gallery under State Socialism

Maria Silina: Transfer of nationalized artworks in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s: infrastructures and patterns

Xenia Schiemann: Business Relations between Kunst und Antiquitäten GmbH (1973–1990) of the GDR and Western Auction Houses

Lunch break (11:30–13:00)

Panel II “Selling during War and Conflict” (13:00–15:00)

Gitta Ho: At the Center of Interest: Competing Access to Jewish Collections and their Transport from occupied France to Germany 1940-1944

Sina Knopf: Art Transfer and Networks. Alternative Methods of Transferring Art from Occupied France

Marieke Maathuis: Women Navigating the Art Market 1940–1945

Lucie Němečková: Josef Cibulka: the Friend of the Fine Arts in Prague during World War II

Coffee break (15:00–15:30)

Panel III “Selling Across Borders” (15:30–17:30)

Dávid Fehér: Hungarian Artists Encountering the International Art Market in the 1960s–1970s and after the Fall of the Iron Curtain: How Did the Market Structure Artistic Career Paths?

Luise Mahler: In War and Peace: Kahnweiler’s Picture Trade, ca. 1919–1949

Dorotea Petrucci: To Show Beauty of Art in Trade’: Commercialising Italy’s Decorative and Industrial Arts in the Inter-War Years

Blair Brooks: Kunst in Kalifornien: Heinz Berggruen and European Modernism in 1930s San Francisco

Break (17:30–18:00)

Evening Lecture Italian Art System and the Making of Art Museums in São Paulo in the Aftermath of World War II by Ana Magalhães (18:00–19:00)

Friday, June 28

Panel IV “Selling Outside of the Canon” (9:30–11:30)

Agata Jakubowska: Women’s Art Travelling Internationally in the 1930s

Jennifer McComas: Modern Jewish Art in Postwar America: Patronage and Production

Francesca Stocco: The role of art market actors in the revival of fibre art in London at the beginning of the 21st century

Nanne Buurman: The Art of Crossing Borders, or The Price of Freedom: Transhistorical Reflections of Aesthetic
(Self-)Reification as a Means of Escape

Lunch break (11:30–13:00)

Panel V “Selling the Unsellable” (13:00–15:00)

Ludovico Baldelli: The Committee Gaze: Art Committees as Infrastructures for the Production of Public Art in Mid-Century New York

Lisa Beißwanger: Economies of Presence: Dealing with Live-Art in the 1970s

Ellen C. Feiss: The Seventh Street Environment: state supported performance and the management of population

Emese Kürti: The Commodification of Conceptual Art in Eastern Europe

Coffee break (15:00–15:15)

Closing discussion (15:15–15:45)