Connecting Art Histories in the Museum

The publications in this series present results of the research and fellowship program Connecting Art Histories in the Museum: Africa, Asia, the Mediterranean and Europe, 400–1900, a joint project of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, started in 2010.

In monographic form, the volumes of this series examine interrelationships and dynamics of historical topographies and object worlds in their modern refractions and stagings. In this, they are guided by various larger questions: How can we deal with the transfer and exchange of moveable or immoveable cultural heritage and how do we consequently define historical spaces? How does the Berlin museum landscape in its old and new form articulate political and cultural attitudes towards historical sites of the production, accumulation, and translation of artefacts? How do museum displays evaluate and present the ritualistic and aesthetic dimensions of objects? What possible dynamics are created between museum exhibits that are alien to one another in terms of provenance, that is, their historical sites and contexts of preservation? Examining these issues covers the relationships between art and knowledge as well as the debate on how museums define the concept of art itself.