16 December

workshop with presentations by Mariia Silina (Bochum and Montreal) and Zsófia Albrecht (Budapest)

workshop with two ten-minute presentations followed by q&a plus discussion

Museum collections in the USSR: knowledge production and provenance research

In this presentation, I aim to explore the evolution of art collections through the lens of the systemic overhaul of museums in the Russian Empire after the 1917 revolution. Following the nationalisation of museums in 1918, a large-scale transformation of museum collections commenced. This involved the assessment and amalgamation of private collections into state holdings, alongside the restructuring of existing museums based on new scholarly and geopolitical frameworks.
I will delineate key trends in this restructuring process, including the emergence of new object categories, institutional and administrative reforms impacting collections and museums’ integrity, overseas sales, confiscations linked to domestic repression and deportations, as well as annexations of neighbouring countries during the Second World War, spanning both Western and Eastern borders.
This overview sets the stage for a discussion on perspectives and challenges inherent in provenance research in the region that was under Soviet museum management for several decades. I will also use this opportunity to present my collaborative research on these matters (Canada, Germany, Sweden, Ukraine, Armenia).
Maria Silina is a Research Fellow at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of History of Art at UQAM, Montreal. Dr. Silina is involved in several collaborations on Communist culture and museum studies, particularly focusing on histories of museum collections and circulation of objects in the Soviet Union. Recently, they organized two conferences on critical museum history: “Museums in Central Asia, Caucasus, and Eastern Europe: Rethinking Soviet Museum Management” (Online, 30 Oct 2023) and “Ukrainian Museums at War: Conceptual, Historical, and Legal Perspectives” (Södertörn University, Stockholm, 17 Nov 2023). There are now completing their book “Art History on Display: Soviet Museum Between Two Wars (1920s-1930s)” for publication.

Objects for life: a personal collection of Dr. Géza Entz Jr. (1875–1943) in the Art Collection of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Since its foundation in 1825 the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) has been in possession of many significant pieces of artefacts. From 1994 the Art Collection of the HAS has been the dedicated pillar of the institution to keep, research and exhibit the treasures of the Academy. The study of the collection in the past twenty years revealed certain specific intentions of commission and collecting between group of artworks (see Bicskei, 2022). The presentation focuses on a recently added heritage belonged to the zoologist Dr. Géza Entz Jr. (1875–1943). It consists of autograph notes, both scientific and private; drawings; photographs (paper and glass plates) and various prints and cut-outs.

Our aim is to contextualise and interpret this assembly (particularly a small group of portraits on scientists and their boxcase) in the mirror of the practice of public, institutional (academic) collecting/national identity building and construction of a personalised collection with special attention on the Entz family’s relationship to art. What could have been the nature of selection of the objects, how could this have functioned as source of self-definition? Also, we would like to investigate this collection in relation with the understanding of cultural identity (Assmann, 2011).

Zsófia Albrecht, MA is the head of Department of Cultural Goods at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences where she also works as an art historian on the Art Collection of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She has been collaborating as a museum educator with the Hungarian National Gallery since 2011.  Her PhD research at Eötvös Loránd University focuses on nineteenth century art education, the life reform movements and reform education.

27 January

24 February

Eliška Zlatohlávková, Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague

20-minute museum presentation followed by q&a plus discussion

The picture collection of the bishops and archbishops of Olomouc

The picture collection of the bishops and archbishops of Olomouc ranks among the most important art collections preserved in the Czech Republic. Its character was shaped by figures such as Bishop Carel of Liechtenstein-Castelcorno and Archbishop Theodor Kohn, who enriched it through acquisitions on the European art market. The collection adorned both representative and private spaces of the archiepiscopal residences, and its display evolved over the centuries. The paper will focus on the presentation of this collection at the Kroměříž Chateau, where two distinct approaches can still be observed today – the classical picture gallery and the so-called panel arrangement, a continuous wall decoration using paintings.

Eliška Zlatohlávková studied Art History at the Department of Art History of Charles University, Prague. She gained her PhD with a theses on the iconography of Rudolf II before starting to work at Studia Rudolphina, the Research Centre for Visual Arts and Culture in the Age of Rudolf II. Currently, she works as scientific researcher at the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague. Her main research focusses on art at the court of Rudolf II, spaces for art collections (studiolo, Kunstkammer) and princely collections of the early modern era. She is co-author of the monograph From Studiolo to Gallery, Secular Spaces for Collections in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown on the Threshold of the Early Modern Era and has written articles dealing with collection spaces and collecting in the early modern era.