VIRTUAL EVENT: IAS Book Launch - Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950

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Published in Thames & Hudson’s renowned World of Art series, Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950 surveys the singular art practices and outstanding artworks of the region, situating them in proximity to the movements, styles, phenomena and events that have shaped the art scenes of Central and Eastern Europe since the 1950s. Beyond the fluctuations of political ideology, it explores the enduring impact of the systemic transformation of art institutions, the role of pivotal exhibitions, as well as social, economic and technological factors in the formation of artistic approaches. Negotiating between the particular agendas of national narratives and the claims of global art history, this account charts the trajectories of Central and Eastern European art across a fluid cultural territory that continues to be as deeply embroiled as ever in the urgent debates of the era.

Find out more about the book on the Thames & Hudson website.

The presentation of Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950 by authors Maja and Reuben Fowkes, directors of the Postsocialist Art Centre (PACT), will be followed by interventions by guest respondents and a discussion on the place of Eastern Europe within a decentralised global art history. Roxana Marcoci is Senior Curator of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where she has engaged with the work of Central and East European artists in exhibitions and through the C-MAP research programme. Charles Esche is Director of Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven and Co-Director of Afterall at Central St. Martins, with a longstanding involvement with the East European art scene. The panel will be introduced by Nicola Miller, the Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies.

Bios

Roxana Marcoci is Senior Curator of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. She holds a PhD in Art History, Theory and Criticism from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She chairs the Central and Eastern European group of MoMA’s C-MAP research program on Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives in a global world. Major exhibitions she curated or co-curated include: Christopher Williams: The Production Line of Happiness (2014), Louise Lawler: WHY PICTURES NOW (2017), A Revolutionary Impulse: The Rise of the Russian Avant-Garde (2016); Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960-1980 (2015); Sanja Iveković: Sweet Violence (2011); Staging Action: Performance in Photography Since 1960 (2011) and Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography (2010). Marcoci is also visiting critic in the graduate programme at Yale University and a contributor to Aperture, Art in America, Art Journal, and Mousse. She has co-edited and authored Photography at MoMA, a three-volume history of the expanded field of photography (2015/17), and is co-editor of Art and Theory of Post-1989 Central and Eastern Europe: A Critical Anthology (2019).

Charles Esche is Director of Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Professor of Contemporary Art and Curating at Central Saint Martins, UAL, London and Co-Director of Afterall Journal and Books. He teaches on the Exhibition Studies MRes course at CSM, and at Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht. Under his directorship, the Van Abbemuseum created a European network called L'Internationale, a co-operation with six European institutions and artist archives. Out with the museum, he (co) curated 'Power and Other Things', Europalia, BOZAR, Brussels (2017); 'Art Turns, Word Turns'; Museum MACAN, Jakarta (2017); 'Le Musée Égaré', Kunsthall Oslo (2017) and 'Printemps de Septembre', Toulouse (2016); Jakarta Biennale (2015); 31st Sao Paulo Bienal, (2014), U3 Triennale, Ljubljana, (2011); RIWAQ Biennale, Palestine, (2007 and 2009); Istanbul Biennale, (2005); Gwangju Biennale, (2002) amongst other international exhibitions. He is chair of CASCO, Utrecht. He received the 2012 Princess Margriet Award and the 2014 CCS Bard College Prize for Curatorial Excellence.

Professor Nicola Miller joined UCL in 1990. She became Professor of Latin American History in 2007 and was Head of the Department of History from 2007 to 2012. From 2020 she is Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies. Her research is focused on the intellectual, cultural, political and international history of the Americas, in comparative and transnational perspectives; and in nationalism and national identity, especially in the Americas. Her recent research has been on the history and politics of knowledge. Her publications include: Republics of Knowledge (Princeton University Press, 2018); America Imagined: Explaining the United States in Nineteenth-Century Europe and Latin America, ed. with Axel Körner and Adam Smith (Palgrave Macmillan, New York and London, 2012); and Reinventing Modernity in Latin America: Intellectuals Imagine the Future, 1900-1930 (Palgrave Macmillan, New York and London, 2008).

Maja and Reuben Fowkes are co-directors of the Postsocialist Art Centre (PACT) at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London and founders of the Translocal Institute for Contemporary Art. In addition to Central and Eastern European Art Since 1950 (Thames & Hudson, 2020), their publications include Ilona Németh: Eastern Sugar (forthcoming 2020), a special issue of Third Text on Actually Existing Worlds of Socialism' (2018) and Maja Fowkes’s 'The Green Bloc: 'Neo-Avant-Garde and Ecology under Socialism'(2015). They have also co-authored numerous journal articles, book chapters and catalogue texts in the fields of East European art and art and ecology, are active as art critics, and have curated exhibitions of contemporary art at museums and art venues across Europe. Reuben Fowkes is a member of the editorial board of Third Text. They are co-founders of the Environmental Arts and Humanities Initiative at Central European University Budapest. At UCL they lead the Getty Foundation Connecting Art Histories supported research project Confrontations: Sessions in East European Art History. www.translocal.org

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