Prof. dr. Gregor Langfeld
This research group focuses on the infrastructures of modern art from a transnational perspective. The original meaning of “infrastructure” (from the Latin infra, and structura) refers to a substructure or ground, and to static constructions which, like nodal points, establish important lines of connection and guarantee supply. Applied to the arts, the term may be said to designate institutions such as museums, exhibition venues, biennials, and universities but also funding institutions, publishers, and other (academic) authorities that contribute to relevant discourses, networks, and the publicizing of art.
Taking a transnational, non-Eurocentric perspective, the goal of this group is to critically question these infrastructures in the modern era, as well as to examine their possible alternatives. It will ask specifically about blind spots, neglected peripheries, and the forgotten margins of history, moving our understanding of modern art production beyond the dominant canon and narrative. Orders, spaces, and actors will be mapped in specific case studies in order to survey the infrastructural field anew.
A series of separate workshops (2020–2022) will discuss themes such as production, transport, collecting, exhibition and display, promotion, publishing and critical discourse, and avoidance and appropriation, with an eye to producing a two-volume publication. The core group of this research network brings together scholars from the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, and Switzerland and welcomes especially contributions to the workshops and publication from researchers outside of Western Europe and North America.
2019–2022
University of Amsterdam
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Universität Zürich
University of the Arts Poznań
Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (Munich).
Core Group
Prof. Dr. Burcu Dogramaci/Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Dr. Rachel Esner/University of Amsterdam
Prof. Dr. Bärbel Küster/Universität Zürich
Prof. Dr. Gregor Langfeld/University of Amsterdam and Open University, Heerlen (group initiator)
Prof. Dr. Christa-Maria Lerm-Hayes/ University of Amsterdam
Prof. Dr. Marta Smolińska/ University of the Arts Poznań
Dr. Ursula Ströbele/Zentralinstitut für