The Vienna School of Art History V: Concealed Influences

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Vienna School of Art History V: Concealed Influences

Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic, 7–8th April 2027

The concept of ‘The Vienna School of Art History’ is one of the few in art historical historiography that refers both to a specific methodological approach and to a period associated with certain figures of 19th and 20th-century art history. Art historians such as Alois Riegl, Max Dvořák or Hans Sedlmayr are associated with formal or structural analysis and are believed to be the most important figures of the Viennese art historical studies of the 19th and 20th centuries. However, such importance of the Vienna School of Art History – methodological and personal – stems from the codification of the term by Julius von Schlosser and his 1934 text ‘Die Wiener Schule der Kunstgeschichte: Rückblick auf ein Säkulum deutscher Gelehrtenarbeit in Österreich’. The aim of the conference is to subject this still-dominant influence of the Vienna School of Art History to critical inquiry with a view to expanding its boundaries beyond the university and personal circle of succession, as defined by Schlosser.

The already fifth international conference on the Vienna School of Art History, held every two years in Prague, will focus on influences that have been concealed within the tradition of the Viennese art history. That means the conference focuses on methods that emerged at the University of Vienna and did not necessarily correspond to the dominant, primarily stylistic and formal method of the Vienna School of Art History; at the same time, the conference aims to examine other art-historical researches conducted in Vienna, though not necessarily within the university settings. Furthermore, the conference examines figures, who were exposed to representatives of the Vienna School of Art History, or who may have adopted its methodological principles, but who, for various reasons, were omitted from its narratives as representatives of the Vienna School of Art History.

Submissions may range within the following areas:
• critical, historiographical, theoretical or methodological examination of the meaning and transformations of the concept of the Vienna School of Art History;
• marginalized art-historical research methods cultivated in Vienna or at the University of Vienna, but outside the main formal stylistic-critical method of the Vienna School of Art History;
• art-historical methods in Vienna outside the university settings (museum or heritage conservation practice; distinct theoretical aspects of art-historical thought; popularization of art history or practice in art market etc.);
• figures who studied or practiced art history at the University of Vienna but are not considered representatives of the Vienna School of Art History (for religious, gender, ethnic, social or other reasons);
• overlooked figures at the University of Vienna who engaged with the history of art but are not considered part of the Vienna School of Art History (archaeologists, historians, psychologists, philosophers, aestheticians etc.);
• the influence of the Vienna School of Art History outside Vienna before and after 1918 (the transformation of the methodology in other lands of the late Austria-Hungary and in national states etc.);
• previously unexplored research topics outside the dominant focus of the Vienna School of Art History (antiquity, modern art, 18th-century art, etc.);
• the influence of forgotten/unknown figures or theories on representatives of the Vienna School of Art History;
• previously unknown narratives about the well-known representatives of the Vienna School of Art History (archival, academic, personal, political etc.).
Papers on other topics that keep the focus of the conference are also welcomed. The languages of the conference will be German and English. Selected conference papers will be collected and published in the Open-Access peer-reviewed The Edgar Wind Journal, as were the papers from the previous conference held in 2025 (see no. 9 and 10; papers from conferences held in 2019, 2021 and 2023 were published in the Journal of Art Historiography).
The key-note lecture will be delivered by Heidrun Rosenberg (University of Vienna) on the topic of ‘What is the Gender of the Vienna School of Art History?‘

Each proposal submitted for a 20 minutes talk must include:
• The title of the paper
• A summary (max. 1800 characters in length)
• The author’s name
• The author’s workplace
• The author’s contact details (e-mail address) for communication with the organisers

Please submit the draft of your paper with the information requested above directly to murar@udu.cas.cz no later than 31 January 2027. On the decision of acceptance/refusal of the proposed contribution will be the authors informed by the end of February 2027.

Assoc. Prof. Tomáš Winter, Ph.D.
Director of the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences

Prof. PhDr. Tomáš Hlobil, CSc.
PhDr. Tomáš Murár, Ph.D.
Organising Committee