Third conference of Baltic art historians
REPRESENTING ART HISTORY IN THE BALTIC COUNTRIES: EXPERIENCES AND PROSPECTS
Art History Department of the Art Academy of Latvia and the Latvian National Museum of Art
Riga, 6–8 October 2016
The Art History Department of the Art Academy of Latvia in collaboration with the Institute of Art History of the same institution and the Latvian National Museum of Art restarts the series of conferences of Baltic art historians, initiated by two meetings of the previous years – The Geographies of Art History in the Baltic Region in 2009, hosted by the Estonian Academy of Art together with the Estonian Association of Art Historians in Tallinn, and (Un)blocked Memory: Writing Art History in Baltic Countries in 2011, co-organized by the Vytautas Magnus University and the Vilnius Academy of Arts in Kaunas.
The agenda of art historians in the three countries during the five years since the last of these events has seen certain changes. New volumes of national art histories are published and being prepared, new opportunities of the digital era are tested to learn the benefits and shortcomings of virtual reconstructions and internet-based resources. New museum spaces for art are being created in theory and practice. Already these and many other steps made give ground for critical self-reflection and discussion, going back from the present developments and future prospects to the lessons of the past and vice versa. Much more important transformations, however, have taken place during twenty-five years since the re-establishment of Baltic independence. In 2001, after the first decade of this span of time, Latvian art historian Eduards Kļaviņš wrote that our art history “is still climbing out of the ruins of the previous methodological barracks, trying both to preserve something of the old and at the same time to find better materials and technologies for more solid buildings”. What and how has been built ever since on this post-socialist construction site? Or perhaps the site with its ruins has been also used as a shipyard for building vessels able to navigate in unexplored waters? If so where have these journeys lead and how have they changed the pre-existing maps of art history? How do the active fleets function and how and the ‘maritime museums’ or ‘cemeteries of ships’ look like?