An unexpected wonder: the art nouveau winter garden of the Ursuline Institute in Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-Waver (Belgium)

22.01.2022

Mario Baeck (° 1958), post-doctoral researcher in Art History, master in Germanic philology and doctor in Art Sciences at Ghent University, Belgium,

Published and lectured widely internationally on various aspects of Flemish and Dutch literature, educational history of the 19^th & 20^th centuries, tile history and Belgian art nouveau and art deco ceramics. His doctoral thesis focussed in 2015 on the development of the Belgian industrial wall and floor tile 1840-1940 in a European context. Was curator of several national and international exhibitions in which the Belgian decorative arts and ceramics in particular were/are put in the spotlight.

Is scientific advisor of the Gilliot & Roelants Tile Museum in Hemiksem near Antwerp, member of the editorial board and past editor of the TACS Journal – Tiles & Architectural Ceramics Society (TACS) UK and regular guest lecturer at Ghent University and the University of Antwerp

As secretary of the non-profit association Wintertuin Ursulinen, he is the co-manager of one of the most striking Belgian Art Nouveau realizations outside Brussels and has written various publications about it amongst which A top-class boarding school. The Ursulines Institute at Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-Waver. A centre of Catholic modernity also available in French and Dutch.

Online lecture

Henriette Grandjean-Bourquin, une artiste aux confins des influences

22.02.2022

Joris Thomas: Immediately after his studies at the École du Louvre (Paris), Joris Thomas was in charge of the conservation and exhibition of the Design Museum Brussels collection (2015-2019). In 2020, he joined the team of the Villa Noailles (Hyères), an art centre that supports young creation. In parallel to these activities, he has been teaching art and design history since 2016 (École du Louvre, École d’ameublement de Paris). He is also involved in personal projects involving research, object publishing, curating and art criticism.

Online lecture

Art Nouveau and Stavanger – the tapestries of Frida Hansen

29.03.2022

Vibece Salthe is educated Cand. Philol in art history from the University of Bergen and works as a curator at Stavanger Art Museum, MUST

Online lecture

The Healthy and Independent Woman as a Phenomena in Mariska Undi’s Art

26.04.2022

Eszter Baldavári (Cegléd, 1986) is an art historian and curator, who works at the Hungarian Museum of Architecture and Monument Protection Documentation Centre in Budapest, Hungary. She is a PhD student within the main research area of European tendencies of the Art Nouveau architecture and their connections with the Hungarian ‘szecesszió’. Among numerous other publications, she authored the monograph on architect Károly Gonda architect in Shanghai in 2019 and on Albert Kálmán Kőrössy architect of Art Nouveau, published in 2021. She curated several international exhibitions on topics such as István Medgyaszay’s architecture (in India, Slovakia and Romania) and the Waves of Art Nouveau – Architecture in the Danube Region (in Belgrade, Ljubljana, Vienna, and Zagreb). She also researches the Ernő Foerk’s Balkan expeditions and architecture in Hungary and Croatia with Boris Dundović from Zagreb.

L’art nouveau au tournant du siècle en Belgique : trois artistes femmes, trois trajectoires

24.05.2022

Barbara Caspers is a PhD student in art history at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. She is working on the role of kinship in the construction of the artistic careers of women artists in Belgium between 1830 and 1914. By analysing the artistic trajectory of the daughters of, wives of and sisters of artists, she seeks to understand the individual and collective mechanisms of artistic consecration of women artists.

Wivi (Olivia) Lönn - the career of an architect

21.06.2022

Renja Suominen-Kokkonen has been working at the University of Helsinki as a set-term personal Professor and as an Acting Professor in Art History. She has also been a Senior Lecturer in Art History at the same university, and the Director of the Finnish Doctoral Programme in Art History.

Her work on Finnish architecture and on the history of Art History has investigated the fringes of the professions and the problems of difficult heritage.

Her publications in English include: “Aino Marsio Aalto as a Creative Director”, in Artek and the Aaltos. Creating a Modern World. Edit. by Nina Strizler-Levine & Timo Riekko. Bard Graduate Center, New York 2016; “Negative Heritage in the History Culture of Finnish Art History”. National Values: Constructing Heritage, eds. Katarina MacLeod and Charlotte Bydler. Konsthistorisk Tidskrift Vol. 85, 3/2016; “Opus Con Amore – The Villa Mairea and the Culture of the Home”, in Inside the Villa Mairea. Art, Design and Interior Architecture. Edit. by Kirsi Gullichsen & Ulla Kinnunen. Alvar Aalto Museum & Mairea Foundation, Helsinki 2009; Aino and Alvar Aalto – A Shared Journey. Interpretations of an Everyday Modernism. Aalto Studies, Vol. 1. Alvar Aalto Foundation, Alvar Aalto Museum, Jyväskylä 2007.

Helena Vurnik's decoration of Ljubljana's most iconic Art Nouveau building

27.09.2022

Helena Seražin, (1970) obtained her PhD in 2003 in art history at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. She works as a Research Adviser at the France Stele Institute of Art History at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (UIFS ZRC SAZU) in Ljubljana. As an Assistant Professor she also gave lectures at University of Ljubljana and Faculty of Humanities in Capodistria. A recipient of various scholarships, she visited numerous institutions to perform research at their departments of art history or history of architecture, among them Università Ca’ Foscari and IUAV in Venice and Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence.

In the last period she has led several applied projects related to modernist architecture and 20th-century urbanism, among them she headed the Slovenian partnership in the EU project “Women’s Creativity since the Modern Movement – MoMoWo,” (2014–2018), an interdisciplinary project co-funded by CREATIVE EUROPE program, www.momowo.eu). Regardless of the leadership of the above, she continuously performs research on early modern art and architecture, centering on profane and sacred architecture and art commissioning in early modern Slovenia and the territory of the Venetian Republic. She is author and editor of several scientific monographs‒among them To the fore : female pioneers in Slovenian architecture, civil engineering and design‒and periodicals. Among others, she is the president of Slovenian Association of Art Historians.

Bibliography: https://bib.cobiss.net/bibliographies/si/webBiblio/bib201_20211210_195922_18476.html

Minka Podhajská (1881 – 1963), toy design between two ages

25.10.2022

Mgr. Marie Míčová, art historian, curator
Born 1971, based in Prague, Czech republic
2004 – graduation – art history, Faculty of Philosophy, Charles University, Prague
2007  – curator of toys, Collection – textiles, fashion, toys, Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague, Czech republic
Occupation field : history of czech toys 1875 – 1939, new artistic imputs, influations and relationships on the turn on 19. and 20. centuries in Prague and Vienna between Czech, Austrian and German artists.
Selection on exhibitions and collaborations within UPM (Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague) from 2008 till today : Czech Toy, Artěl Cooperative, Matchbox, Ladislav Sutnar – Toys and Puppets, Small Stories, Minka Podhajská, Find a Toy.

Sarah Bernhardt, icône et artiste de l’Art Nouveau

22.11.2022

Stéphanie Cantarutti is chief curator of the Petit Palais, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.
A former student of the Ecole du Louvre and the Institut National du Patrimoine, she was successively curator at the Maison de Victor Hugo and the Musée Bourdelle in Paris, before joining the Petit Palais. In charge of the 19th century painting collections, she curated the exhibitions “Albert Besnard (1849-1934), Modernités Belle Epoque” in 2016-2017, “The Dutch in Paris (1789-1914)” in 2018 and “Ilya Répine (1844-1930), painting the Russian soul” in 2021-2022. She is currently working on several exhibitions planned at the Petit Palais in 2023, one devoted to Sarah Bernhardt, with Cécilie Champy-Vinas, and the other to Eva Gonzalès (1847-1883), the painter who was the only pupil of Edouard Manet.

Cécilie Champy-Vinas, Director of the Zadkine Museum
Cécilie Champy-Vinas is a curator and has a doctorate in art history. She was in charge of sculptures at the Petit Palais, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, before becoming director of the Musée Zadkine in Paris in autumn 2021. At the Petit Palais, Cécilie Champy-Vinas has curated several exhibitions devoted to 19th century sculpture and art (Jules Dalou in 2013 and Vincenzo Gemito in 2019 at the Petit Palais, Meunier, Dalou, Rodin: Les sculpteurs du travail in 2020, at the Musée Camille-Claudel in Nogent-sur-Seine). With Stéphanie Cantarutti, she is currently preparing an exhibition dedicated to Sarah Bernhardt for spring 2023, which will retrace the actress’s career, but will also rediscover her taste for and artistic practice of sculpture.

Women of the Glasgow Style: Education, Empowerment, Originality, Innovation.

20.12.2022

Alison Brown has been Glasgow Museums’ Curator for European Decorative Art and Design from 1800 to present since 1999. Her particular focus is on the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Glasgow Style, art and design education, and decorative art and design from the 1860s through the 1950s. She has lectured internationally, and curated displays for Glasgow Museums including the Mackintosh and Glasgow Style gallery at Kelvingrove and the history of Mackintosh’s Scotland Street School. She is curator of the Mackintosh Ingram Street Tearooms project, most recently working, between 2015-2018, on the conservation and restoration of the largest interior, The Oak Room of 1907, which was a partnership between Glasgow Museums and V&A Dundee. She curated the exhibition Charles Rennie Mackintosh: Making the Glasgow Style, which marked the 150th anniversary of Mackintosh’s birth in 2018 with an inaugural showing at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and subsequent 2019 presentation at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, England, and adapted it for the U.S.A. into Designing the New: Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow Style, a touring exhibition co-organized by Glasgow Museums and the American Federation of Arts. In addition to the two publications accompanying the exhibition and tour, Brown has contributed articles and essays to numerous books and journals, including The Flower and the Green Leaf: Glasgow School of Art in the Time of Charles Rennie Mackintosh (2009), and Glasgow’s Hidden Treasure: Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Ingram Street Tearooms (2004). She is vice chair of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society and co-editor of its journal.