Asymmetrical Views: Art Exhibitions of the Nineteenth Century Revisited

CALL FOR PAPERS ✍️

We invite you to join the conference Asymmetrical Views: Art Exhibitions of the Nineteenth Century Revisited, taking place at the Institute of Art History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

📅 Important Dates:

• Application Deadline: June 30, 2026
• Conference Dates: November 26–27, 2026

The 19th century marked a pivotal transformation in the art exhibition landscape, turning it into a vital modern visual medium. Recent research has shown how exhibitions evolved through various exhibitionary structures, display strategies, and political contexts, reflecting the growing significance of visual experiences. As these exhibitions gained communicative power, they shaped collective cultural and political narratives, frequently focusing on national identities.

Since the 1990s, scholarship has centered on major exhibitionary events, but there's a current shift towards examining marginalized actors, practices, and perspectives. This workshop aims to re-examine 19th-century exhibitions through the lens of asymmetry, exploring tensions such as:

• Between centers and peripheries
• Official and unofficial displays
• Elite and popular audiences
• Dominant and marginalized narratives

🔍 Topics for Exploration:

• Exhibitions and Public Formation: The exhibition format as a catalyst for forming art publics and spaces, along with the emergence of exclusions based on gender, class, ethnicity, and nationalism.
• Transnational Exhibition Networks: Insights on international travel of exhibitions and critics' perspectives.
• Curatorship in the 19th Century: The role and profession of curatorship as forms of cultural mediation.
• Current Exhibition Histories: Comparative and interdisciplinary methodologies for examining exhibition histories.

Please submit an abstract (max. 250 words) along with a brief biography and institutional affiliation to Pavla Machalíková at machalikova@udu.cas.cz by June 30, 2026.

🏛️ Location:

Husova 352/4, 110 00 Prague, Czech Republic
For more details, visit our Facebook Event.