Connecting Art Histories in the Museum: Africa, Asia, the Mediterranean and Europe, 400-1900 combines academic and museum research with curatorship. Up to six outstanding international young art historians spend one to two years investigating artistic and cultural interactions in the Mediterranean region and Asia, using the objects from the Staatliche Museen’s collections. An important area of their work is taken up with presenting their findings in a museum display.
Set up as a joint project between the KHI and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the innovative fellowship programme focuses on artistic and cultural interactions in the Mediterranean area and Asia, with a focus on the period between 400 and 1650. The scholars study museum objects or groups of objects with the aim of establishing a dialogue between Western, Byzantine, Islamic, Asian, and African art histories. Instead of concentrating exclusively on the objects’ place in the history of pre-modern art or their museological aspects, the research programme is concerned with the modern repercussions and expressions of interactions between diverse historical topographies.
These dynamics are examined in the light of the following questions:
Museums play a key role in the on-going redefinition of art and art history and their relation to aesthetics, anthropology, and politics in the decentralized, globalized 21st century. With its ‘universal’ collections, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin participates in this process in a particular way, offering a unique opportunity for research using multidisciplinary approaches on artefacts from different cultures and civilizations. International doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers in art history and related disciplines are entitled to apply for the fellowship programme. Fellows also have the chance to provide curatorial assistance on individual exhibitions, as well as contribute to the development of new concepts for exhibition practices. The joint activities of the research group, such as seminars, workshops, excursions, and conferences, allow academic exchange and research collaboration both within and outside the museum.
The Kunstbibliothek, Museum für Islamische Kunst, and Museum für Asiatische Kunst have been involved in the project since 2010, the Ethnologisches Museum since 2014.
Publications on the research findings and and previously published volumes of this series:
Prof. Dr. Gerhard Wolf, Director of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max Planck Institute
Dr. Hannah Baader, project manager of the Minerva programme, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max Planck Institute
Prof. Dr. Michael Eissenhauer, Director-General, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Dr. Jörg Völlnagel, Head of exhibitions, research, projects, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
The Scholarship programme is supported by the Kuratorium Preußischer Kulturbesitz.
Dr. Sabiha Göloğlu, Museum für Islamische Kunst
Multi-, Paraline, Perspectival, and Photographic Views: Travelling Images of the Islamic Pilgrimage and Visitation Sites
1.10.2018‒31.08.2019
Dr. des. Regina Höfer, Museum für Asiatische Kunst
Mapping Art Collecting and Circulation in the British Empire: The Connoisseur and Dealer L. A. Waddell
1.09.2018‒31.08.2019
Max Koss, M.A., Kunstbibliothek
Printing Objects: Art, Circulation and Reproduction, ca. 1900
12.09.2016‒11.09.2018
Dr. Subhashini Kaligotla, Museum für Asiatische Kunst
Argument and Ornament in the Architecture of Deccan India
1.08.2016‒31.07.2018
Dr. Alya Karame, Museum für Islamische Kunst
The lives of Qur’anic manuscripts from 11th century AD Khurasan: Palimpsests of Religious and Political Meanings
19.09.2016‒18.09.2018
Bruno Sotto Mayor, M.A., Ethnologisches Museum
Rethinking /nkishi/ Art History in Central Africa
1.07.2016‒30.06.2018
Dr. Ning Yao, Museum für Asiatische Kunst
Reframing Portrait Paintings in Late Imperial China
15.08.2016‒14.08.2018
Regina Höfer, M.A., Museum für Asiatische Kunst
Waddells koloniale Tibet- und Indien Sammlung im Museum für Asiatische Kunst und dem Ethnologischen Museum, Berlin
David Horacio Colmenares, M.A., Kunstbibliothek
The Egyptian Conjecture: Material Crossovers in Early Modern Antiquarianism
Aifeng Chen, M.A., Museum für Asiatische Kunst
Study on the Avalokiteśvara imagery of Turfan in the Qočo Uighur period
Prof. Dr. Giuseppe Vignato, Museum für Asiatische Kunst
Survey and Study of the Rock Monasteries of Kucha
Priyani Roy Choudhury, M.A., Museum für Islamische Kunst
The Fashioning of a Mughal City: Fatehpur Sikri
Dr. Ines Konczak, Museum für Asiatische Kunst
Kulturaustausch an der nördlichen Seidenstraße im Spiegel der Wandmalereien Kučas (Xinjiang, VR China). Überlieferung und Wandlung der Darstellung materieller Kultur
Dr. Zhihua Liu, Museum für Asiatische Kunst
Object, collection and identity: A case study of the decorative object in the studio in Ming dynasty
Dr. Mathias Fubah Alubafi, Ethnologisches Museum
Beyond the Bamum Throne at the Berlin Ethnological Museum
Dr. Ching-Ling Wang, Museum für Asiatische Kunst
Praying for Ten Thousand Goodness: On Ding Guanpeng’s “The Buddha Preaching” in the Berlin Collection
Dr. Magdalena Wróblewska, Kunstbibliothek
Between artifacts and their representations. The Rhetorics of Artworks’ Reproductions from the Photographic Collection of Art Library in Berlin
Dr. Satomi Hiyama, Museum für Asiatische Kunst
The Transmission of the Ornamental Motives in the Wall Painting of Central Asia
Dr. Nadia Ali, Museum für Islamische Kunst
Deconstructing the Muslim Self and its Relevance to the Study of Early Islamic Art
Dr. Amanda Phillips, Museum für Islamische Kunst
Actively Seeking Consumers: Everyday Objects of Islamic Art in their Social-Historical Context
Dr. Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Museum für Islamische Kunst
Mschatta in Berlin. Grundsteine islamischer Kunst
Dr. Friederike Weis, Kunstbibliothek
Prozesse der Bildfindung. Rezeption und Interpretation von Geschichten biblischen Ursprungs in der islamischen Buchmalerei
