08.10.2025(Un)mapping Infrastructures of Modern Art, IV: Infrastructures ofsupporting travels and exhibiting modernism transnationally(1940s-1990s)

The workshop is part of a series guided by an international art history research group focusing since 2020 on the infrastructures of modern art from a transnational perspective. The original meaning of “infrastructure” refers to stable and enduring substructures or underpinnings of society and are often technical in nature as well as run by the state. As such, they safeguard nodal points of support and connectivity. As the development of international artistic networks evolved into a predominant goal for modern artists, collectors, dealers and displaying institutions over the 20th century, the conditions of these networks merit a closer look. The term infrastructures not only refers to technical support, but also – as referenced throughout by institutional critique – to ways of making some things possible or conceivable of including certain areas and individuals while not others. Applied to the arts, the term highlights underlying structures for institutions such as museums, exhibition venues, biennials, private collections, production sites (studios, workshops, laboratories, academies, art schools) and universities but also funding of institutions, publishers, and other (academic) authorities that contributed to relevant discourses, networks, and the publishing of art, (un)mapping their transnational relations. In the series of “(Un)mapping Infrastructures” (former workshops in Munich, Zagreb and Budapest) the focus of this workshop will turn from objects to travelling subjects: to infrastructures which connected and financially supported artists from places elsewhere as well as related strategies of exhibiting art from 1945 to the 1990s. We are interested in how individual cases correspond to histories of institutional funding, travel grants, residencies, project funding (exhibitions, research trips). How inclusive have traveling exhibitions, festivals, competitions, foundations and transnational funding programs been? What purposes (open and hidden) drive the funding, what individual opportunities are removed from it?

8.-10. October 2025, Poznań

Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts, Poznań

Arts, Poznań, Al. Marcinkowskiego 28, H building, 4th floor, Art Loft

National Museum of Art, Poznań

Aleje Karola Marcinkowskiego 9

Organized by Prof. Dr. Bärbel Küster (University of Zurich), Prof. Dr. Marta Smolińska (Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts, Poznań)

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

Wednesday, 8.10.2025

15:30 Registration at the National Museum in Poznań

16:00 Guided Tour in English (in person only): Presentation of the National Museum’s permanent collection of 20th-Century Polish Art and the temporary exhibition Ukryte znaczenia. Motyw wnętrz w sztuce polskiej od XIX do XXI wieku (Hidden Meanings: The Motif of Interiors in Polish Art from the 19th to the 21st Century)

18:00 Opening

Keynote: Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi (Museum of Modern Art, New York)

Making Exhibitions. Infrastructures of Mid-Century African Modernism

Reception at the National Museum of Art, Poznań

Thursday, 9.10.2025

9:00-9:30 Introduction

Section 1 – Structures between Cultural Diplomacy and Exhibition Making

Moderation Part I: Bärbel Küster (University of Zurich)

9:30-10:10 Dominicus Makukula (University of Dar es Salaam)

The Slade School of Art, the Harmon Foundation and Tanzania's Modern Art Exhibitions since the 1950s

10:10-10:50 Nadia von Maltzahn (Orient-Institut Beirut)

Exhibiting Lebanon in London and Paris in 1989: The role of bilateral friendship associations in artistic infrastructures

10:50-11:15 Short coffee break

Moderation Part II: Lynn Rother (Leuphana University Lüneburg)

11:15-11:55 Pujan Karambeigi (Columbia University)

From Colonial Museums to Cultural Nationalism and Back: On UNESCO’s Museum Training Centre in Jos in the 1960s

11:55-12:35 Abigael van Alst (University of Zurich)

Transnational Artistic Networks and the Galleria Trastevere: Italian-Maghrebi Exchanges in Mid-20th-Century Rome

12:35-13:00 Discussion

13:00-14:00 Lunch

Section 2 – Artists Going Abroad, Travelling on Infrastructures

Moderation Part I: Bärbel Küster (University of Zurich)

14:00-14:40 Kristian Handberg (University of Copenhagen)

Exhibitions of Danish Artists in Poland and East Germany 1965: Artist contacts and diplomatic aspirations in two new exhibition initiatives across the Iron Curtain

14:40-15:10 Annabel Ruckdeschel (University of Giessen/University of Zurich)

Infrastructures of Solidarity: Travels to and from the 1976 East Berlin Printmakers’ Meeting

15:10-15:20 Short coffee break

Moderation Part II: Christa Maria Lerm Hayes (University of Amsterdam)

15:20-16:00 Althea Ruoppo (Boston University)

Untangling Transnational Encounters from Locks of Hair: Rosemarie Trockel’s Weekend in Moscow with the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, 1990

16:00-16:40 Felix Vogel (University of Kassel)

“Is airfare provided to install work?” — Logistics, Travel and Production at documenta

16:40-17:00 Discussion

17:00 Visit to the Arsenał Gallery

Friday, 10.10.2025

Section 3 – From Institution to NGO to global networks

Moderation Part I: Jan Wasiewicz (Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts, Poznań)

9:30-10:10 Maria Anna Rogucka (Jagiellonian University/University of Zaragoza)

Museums as Infrastructures of Mobility: Muzeum Sztuki, GASK and Transnational Art Support in Communist Europe (1960s–1970s)

10:10-10:50 Jakub Banasiak (The Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw)

Instead of the State: Operation of the Foundations for Contemporary Art in Late Socialist Poland

10:50-11:15 Short coffee break

Moderation Part II: Abigael van Alst (University of Zurich)

11:15-11:55 Daniela Ortiz dos Santos (Goethe University Frankfurt)

Paolo Gasparini and UNESCO: Collaborations, Displacement the (Re)making of Latin American Built Culture

11:55-12:35 Christopher Williams-Wynn (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz/ Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation)

Exhibitionary Infrastructure in an Uneven World-System

12:35-13:00 Discussion

13:00-14:30 Lunch

14:30-16:00 Visit to the Jarosław Kozłowski Archive

Section 4 – Titograd's multidirectional networks

Moderation: Marta Smolińska (Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts)

16:00-16:40 Nataša Jagdhuhn (Humboldt University of Berlin)

The Gallery for the Art of the Non-Aligned States as a Multinodal Network and Tool for Creating Global Dialogue on Decolonizing Museum Theory and Practice

16:40-17:20 Yini Yang (Free University of Berlin)

(Un)intentional Misunderstandings: The Yugoslav Modern Art Exhibition in China (1980-81) as a Starting Point

17:20-18:00 Sanja Sekelj (Institute of Art History, Zagreb)

Yugoslav Avant-gardes in France (1989–1990): Personal Networks and State Infrastructures in Late Socialist Yugoslavia

18:00 Final Discussion

Flyer and Program to download here (PDF, 395 KB)