Art Histories and Terminologies III: Languages, Lexica, Aesthetics

Over the last three years the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe" of Heidelberg University and the program Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices (Berlin) have been collaborating in a series of workshops under the overarching title "Terminologies and Art Histories". The first two workshops, held in Berlin and Heidelberg, mainly addressed the problems and potentials of a transcultural dialogue in global art history beyond Eurocentric or nationalist points of view. The questions discussed included how specific national or transnational terminologies or languages of art history have been built over the last 150 years, what were the connections or power relations among them, how were they bound to dynamics of institutionalization and in which ways art history has been in dialogue with other discourses.

The workshop on 12-13 December 2016 in Florence will primarily discuss the ways art-historical discourses engage with historical aesthetic terms, modes of description and the denomination of artefacts in a variety of languages—including, for example, Sanskrit, Chinese, Nahuatl, Greek, Farsi, Arab and African—both in the premodern and modern period (with an emphasis on the first). The workshop is organized around a number of case studies, to be introduced by the participants. One aim is to open a conversation with studies in philology and comparative literature. Another major concern is to address future perspectives for the languages and terminologies of art history/ies.