Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art Conference,
Nuremberg, Germany
July 15 – 20, 2012
Dr. David Raizman
This international art history conference is held
every four years—previously it was held in Melbourne,
Australia (2008), and in 2016 it will be hosted in Beijing,
China. In Nuremberg, there were 400 presenters from 46
nations who presented papers over a 5-day period.
There were a total of 20 two-days sessions: ten on
Monday and Tuesday, and another ten on Thursday and
Friday. Wednesday the conference sponsored tours to
visit museums in Nuremberg or daytrips to several places
of art and architectural interest such as Bamberg,
Regensburg, and Vierzehnheiligen, all in the Franconia
region of southern Germany.
The overarching theme of the conference was
“Das Objekt,” and marked a return and reconsideration
of object-based research in art history, focusing upon the
context in which objects were, and are, viewed and appreciated in their own time as well as today and in
the future. Sessions included the role of museums in mediating our relationship to objects, the role of
print media and mass communication including the web, politics, as well as sessions devoted to the
great Nuremberg Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, the subject of a major exhibition at the
Germanisches National Museum in Nuremberg.
The conference afforded
the opportunity to listen to
numerous papers, meet several
new colleagues who share my own
recent research interest in 19thcentury world’s fairs, including
several curators responsible for
collections that include objects
purchased from world’s fairs by
their respective institutions, such as
the
Germanisches
National
Museum in Nuremberg, the
Museum der Angewandte Kunst
(MAK) in Vienna, and the National
Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. Coffee breaks, dinners, and other social events hosted by the
conference were great opportunities for further discussion. In addition the city of Nuremberg was
charming and hospitable, seeing the “Frühe Dürer” exhibition was a rare treat, and the visits I made
both to Bamberg, Munich, and to a small but very informative museum on the outskirts of the city
devoted to Jewish life in the region (located at the little suburb of Fürth). All of this was extremely
stimulating. In addition the conference badge given to each participant and attendee permitted free
admission to all museums and collections, as well as free travel on the underground and bus systems in
the city.
My session and paper were well received, and the issue of world’s fair in relation to art and
design history seemed to be of interest to many in attendance as well as related to the subjects of other
related talks during the afternoon I
spoke. More specifically, a paper by
an Italian Professor (who teaches in
Turin) focused on the tradition of
displaying portraits of ‘illustrious
men’ in the private collections of
Renaissance art patrons and later in
collections such as the Uffizi in
Florence.
This
presentation
connected with elements of my own
research on the busts of literary
figures that also appear in 19th
century furniture that was on display
at world’s fairs. These kinds of
connections were invaluable, and the conference really couldn’t have been more stimulating and useful
for me as a scholar and teacher. In addition, the conference opening and closing ceremonies featured
high-level diplomats and cabinet ministers from current and previous host nations, whose remarks
reinforced the importance of the humanities in general in education as well as the discipline of art
history more specifically.