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Connecting Art Histories in the Museum. The Mediterranean and Asia 400-1650

 Gerhard Wolf and Hannah Baader in collaboration with Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Museums had a strong impact on the formation of art history as an academic field in the 19th century and play an important role in the rethinking of the discipline in the global perspectives of the 21st century. The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (SMB), with their universal collections subdivided in a number of specialized museums according to a topographical and systematic order, did and do prominently participate in these processes. The recent planning of their reordering and the development of new display concepts offer a unique opportunity for basic research on the artefacts themselves and the history of their mobility within various spatial orders. On this premise, the KHI in Florence (Max-Planck-Institut) and the SMB wish to establish a research group of young scholars who will work at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in close contact with the single collections and their curators, aiming at a thorough study of objects within a broad methodological perspective. The project will focus on the study of premodern artistic and cultural interactions in the Mediterranean and Asia (MeCais Area) from 400-1650 as a particularly interesting field for the history of intercultural and interartistic agencies, the question of cultural mobility, the works of art as objects as well as the formation and transformation of spaces. This not only coincides with a major focus in the history of the Berlin collections and the KHI’s research agenda, but will also connect the academic disciplines of Western, Byzantine, Islamic and Asian art history. As a first step, the research project and fellowship program will be based on a cooperation with the Art Library, the Museum for Islamic Art and the Asian Art Museum, and collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science is also planned.

The research program will consist of individual projects dedicated to objects (or groups of objects) in the SMB collections and joint group activities. Seminars and workshops will offer the possibility for discussions of fundamental issues regarding historical and present topographies of art and artefacts. These include the notion of the "object" and that of "mobility", the relation of art and science or knowledge in the period of investigation, the history of display, and the borderlines of art and non-art as defined or questioned by the museums. However, the project is neither confined to the field of museology nor even exclusively to the history of premodern art. It rather aims to study the intertwining of topographies: those built by the museum on the one hand, and on the other the movements, places of production and "transfer hubs" of objects today displayed or stored in the SMB. The discussion of intertwining topographies opens a double or multiple perspective: how does the study of historical cultural spaces deal with the actual displacement and replacement of mobile or presumably immobile heritage (in the case of architecture), how does the old and new "museum landscape" of Berlin articulate political and cultural attitudes towards places of production and historical sites, how are the anthropological, ritual and aesthetic dimensions of objects valued by their display in the museum, and what are the dynamics between objects that are "alien" to each other as regards their geographical and historical locations and contexts in various kinds of collections.


Art Library
The Art Library of the National Museums in Berlin is a centre of excellence in art history and media studies and boasts a distinguished specialist library (500,000 volumes).
The museum also has eminent collections on architecture, photography, graphic and textile design as well as book design and visual arts. Together, the museum collections and the books held by the Art Library cover the whole spectrum of primary and secondary sources for research into the history of art and culture.

The interdisciplinary project "Connecting Art Histories in the Museum" offers an ideal platform for research within the rich resources of the Architecture Collection and the Ornamental Prints Collection, with their unique array of sources on the history of ornamentation, emblems, European architecture and handicrafts. The Famous Lipperheide Costume Library also forms another key resource on the history of dressing practices and period costumes from early modern times to the present day.

One central challenge is cross-cultural and cross-epochal research into the history of the development and migration of ornament, drawing inspiration from the Ornamental Prints Collection of the Art Library and consulting the collections of the Museum of Asian Art and the Museum of Islamic Art. Another major theme is research on ephemeral and performative art forms of the early modern age (ceremonies, festivities, fireworks, stage architecture, dance, textiles, clothing and fashion, theatre, masks) and their pictorial representation.


Asian Art Museum
The Museum of East Asian Art and the Museum of Indian Art merged in December 2006 and now form the Asian Art Museum (Museum für Asiatische Kunst). The Collection of East Asian Art presents a comprehensive exhibition embracing the broad spectrum of art from China, Japan and Korea. Highlights include the collection of Japanese paintings and East Asian lacquer art works from the collection of Klaus Friedrich Naumann, as well as the Berlin collection Yuegutang featuring Chinese ceramics from the Neolithic period up to the 15th century. The Collection of South, Southeast and Central Asian Art houses one of the most important collections worldwide of art from the Indo-Asian cultural area, from the 4th millennium BC to the present. This extensive geographic region includes, next to India, the regions Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, the Autonomous Regions Tibet and Xinjiang of the People’s Republic of China, the Southeast Asian countries of Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, as well as the Indonesian Islands.

The successful candidate will work in the Collection of South, Southeast and Central Asian Art. The most important part of this Collection is the material brought back by the four German Turfan Expeditions (1902-1914). These include one of the world’s largest wall painting collections (5th-10th centuries), a large textile collection, painting fragments on paper and silk, and archaeological material, for example wooden decorations from buildings found in the desert. Religions represented in the collection are Buddhism, Manichaeism and Nestorian Christianity, and there is a manuscript collection in over 20 languages and scripts. Many of the large wall paintings and other objects are well preserved, and allow the study of motif transfer from the Hellenistic world and the Mediterranean, India and Iran to the northern Silk Road. Links with China and beyond (Japan, Korea) and the early Islamic cultures can also be investigated. The archive material and historical photo collection of the Turfan Expeditions completes this important collection, which is uniquely suited for the research of cultural exchange.

As the museum prepares to move to the centre of Berlin from Southwest Berlin (Dahlem) into the Humboldt Forum, where the non-European collections of the National Museums in Berlin will be exhibited, researching intercultural links becomes an important task in preparation of planning the new galleries, where these will be demonstrated, preferably with the help of specific projects and collaborations (projected date for the move is 2014). The successful candidate should have a research interest in one of the following areas: wall painting (transfer of religious iconography and/or ornamental design), textiles (transfer of ornamental designs) or material culture (architecture, objects from the Silk Road, transfer of ornamental design). The knowledge of Chinese or Japanese would be an advantage.


Museum of Islamic Art
The Museum of Islamic Art at the Pergamonmuseum Berlin is the only institution of its kind in Germany and one of the major collections of Islamic Art and Archeology worldwide. The broad spectrum of the collection includes architectural decorations, applied arts and crafts, jewellery, and rare illuminated and calligraphed manuscripts. The architectural decorations represent one of the major attractions, also conveying typical concepts of space and environments in various media: stone (the large façade from the Mshatta/Jordan palace, 8th C), stuccoes (archaeological finds from the Califal capital of Samarra / Irak, 9th C), the painted wooden paneling of an upper class household (Aleppo Room / Syria, early 17th C), wall ceramics in various techniques (prayer niches from Kashan / Iran and Konya / Turkey, 13th C).

The museum will move inside Pergamonmuseum - the most visited museum in Berlin - and will be re-opened with an exhibition space of about 2,800m2. The layout and concept will explore innovative ways of presenting the cultural legacy of Muslim Societies to an international audience. Key ideas will be new categories of chronological order, supraregional connections (techniques and trade, taste and esthetics between Europe and China), objects in their spheres of life, the biographies and concert of objects (as they never come alone). Applicants are invited to apply with any project that develops material culture in a wider intercultural perspective. Applicants should be trained or familiar with the arts, archeology and/or history of Muslim societies.
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