24.06.2025
Kunstbibliothek
Together with the Deutsches Historisches Museum, the Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin is organising the symposium “Tenacious Tropes: Colonial Narratives in Visual Advertising” on 21 and 22 November 2025 in the lecture hall at the Kulturforum. Presentations will be given in German or English, participation is free of charge after registration. Proposals for talks can be submitted until 1 September 2025.
Advertising pervades the modern world. For over 150 years, we have been flooded daily with colourful images designed to encourage consumption. They burn themselves into our collective memory, ready to be recalled and reactivated. Constantly quoting itself, image-beased advertising perpetuates visual patterns that often go back to their beginnings in the 19th century – to an era that was characterised by imperialist thought and action in Europe and North America. From the play with a longing for ‘exoticism’ to ‘chocolate magicians’ and other discriminatory stereotypes, many advertising motifs have persisted to this day as remnants of a colonialist visual language.
The two-day symposium traces the origins of colonial narratives in visual advertising from the heyday of colonialism around 1900 to their developments in the 20th and 21st centuries. Evidence of (post)colonial contexts in international image-based advertising media from the 1860s to the 2020s will be analysed in around twelve 20-minute presentations. Experts from all areas of history, social and economic sciences, advertising, design and other fields are invited to submit papers.
Call for Papers: You are invited to contribute a 20-minute visual presentation to the symposium. Detailed information on the symposium and the application procedure can be found here (PDF German/English, 223 KB). Proposals must be submitted using the application form (PDF, 100 KB).
The symposium “Tenacious Tropes: Colonial Narratives in Visual Advertising” is organised by the Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, and the Deutsches Historisches Museum, in cooperation with the Stiftung Stadtmuseum.