The Sixth Conference of the Association of Greek Art Historians will be held November 22 through 24, 2019 at the Amphitheater of the Benaki Museum, 138 Pireos Street, Athens, Greece. Thirty eight papers will respond to the conference’s theme “Periods of Crisis and Paradigm Shifts.”
Over the past few years the notion of ‘global crisis,’ whether economic, political, social or cultural, has generated extensive theoretical discussion. It also seems to have permeated the production of art as well as the reconsideration of the role of art institutions. More recently Documenta 14 has attempted to designate Greece as a ‘paradigmatic’ country in terms of an economic as well as a cultural crisis.
Concurrently, the humanities, and specifically art history, appear to go through their own period of crisis, not only at a socio-political, but also at an epistemological level. For instance, what is the relationship of art history to the ever more expanding fields of visual and cultural studies or the digital humanities?
Even though the notion of crisis seems to characterize the present moment, history is full of decisive moments when a significant event became a catalyst for radical change. How did these periods of ‘crisis’ in the Western and non-Western world manifest themselves and what kind of paradigm shifts have they proposed? What were the historical, ideological, and socio-political ruptures that accompanied them and how were they interpreted by the art historical discourse? What was the impact on artistic practices, art criticism and the cultural institutions?
The conference proposes to explore the above questions by focusing on the notion of ‘paradigm shift,’ which is intended either in the epistemological sense or the broader sense of changes in the perception of historical events and interpretative models. Additionally, it aims to investigate and highlight the paradigms of the canonical narratives and the ways that they have shaped the art historical discourse.
Topics include:
- Canonical narratives and their relative ‘paradigms’
- Paradigm shifts and epistemological ruptures
- Shifts in the historical narrative of the art historical discourse
- Changes in the role of cultural institutions and of the art market
- Interdisciplinary approaches, technoscience and the crisis of humanist studies
- Global art history, interculturality and art geographies
Scientific and Organizing Committee
Sotirios Bahtsetzis, Assistant Professor of Art History, Deree-The American College of Greece; Instructor, Hellenic Open University
Elena Hamalidi, Assistant Professor of Art History, Ionian University
Iro Katsaridou, Curator, Museum of Byzantine Culture, Thessaloniki
Annie Kontogiorgi, Art historian P.h.D., Theatrologist, Head of the Department of Museums of Modern Cultural Heritage, Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports; Instructor, Hellenic Open University; Member of the Executive Board of EEIT
Thodoris Koutsogiannis, PhD Art History, Chief Curator, Hellenic Parliament Art Collection; Member of the Executive Board of EEIT
Dimitris Pavlopoulos, Associate Professor of Art History, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Angeliki Pollali, Associate Professor of Art History, Deree-The American College of Greece; Vice President of EEIT