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The Avant-Garde Museum: Panel Discussion

When: —
Venue: Online

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The event, spurred by the publication of the book by the Muzeum Sztuki in Lódz, will raise issues related to the museumization of the avant-garde in Europe and America in the 1920s. It will also present one of the earliest museums of the avant-garde which was set up by a group of Polish artists in the industrial city of Lódz in 1931.

Confirmed speakers include: Professor Janet Marstine, Professor Christina Lodder, Jaroslaw Suchan, Agnieszka Pindera. The panel is moderated by Dr Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius.

'The Avant-Garde Museum' is the first study focusing on the avant-garde’s auto-institutionalization. It compares several (quasi) institutions of the avant-garde established between World War I and World War II: Museums of Artistic Culture in post-October Russia, Kabinett der Abstrakten designed by El Lissitzky for the Landemuseum Hannover in 1927, the activities of the Société Anonyme Inc., founded in New York in the early 1920s, and the International Collection of Modern Art of the “a.r.” group opened to the public in 1931 at the City Museum in Lódz. Critical studies by major scholars of the historical avant-garde are accompanied by translations of rarely discussed texts, reproductions of unknown archival sources, as well as art works. The Avant-Garde Museum includes contributions by Jaroslaw Suchan and Agnieszka Pindera, as well as Masha Chlenova, Maria Gough, Jennifer R. Gross, Frauke V. Josenhans, Sandra Karina Löschke, Daniel Muzyczuk, Rebecca Uchill, ok group (J. Myers and J. Szupinska), Marcin Szelag, and Tomasz Zaluski.

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Speakers
  • Agnieszka Pindera -

    Agnieszka Pindera is Head of the Research Center at the Muzeum Sztuki in Lódz. She is interested in cultural policies, history of art institutions, including grassroots and independent initiatives. She has edited a series of books on artists’ self-organization (Practical Guide for Artists), and a history of alternative exhibition institutions (Artist-run Initiatives and Galleries) in collaboration with Anna Ptak and Wiktoria Szczupacka. She is the author of a biography of Józef Patkowski, the founder of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio, a center established in 1957 to stimulate experimental interdisciplinary work (Patkowski: Ambassador of Music from Planet Mars). She curated an exhibition by Konrad Smolenski at the Polish Pavilion during the 55th International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia (with Daniel Muzyczuk), as well as at the Centre PasquArt (Biel/Benne) and Zacheta National Gallery of Art (Warsaw).

  • Dr Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius -

    Dr Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius is an Associate Lecturer in the Department of Art History, Birkbeck and Research Fellow at the Centre of Museum Cultures. She was Curator (1980-1997) and Deputy Director (2009-11) of the National Museum in Warsaw. Among her recent publications are From Museum Critique to the Critical Museum (Ashgate 2015, with Piotr Piotrowski); Imaging and Mapping Eastern Europe: Sarmatia Europea to the Communist Bloc (Routledge 2021).

  • Jaroslaw Suchan -

    Jaroslaw Suchan was the Director of Muzeum Sztuki in Lódz. An art historian, critic, and curator, with a focus on the avant-garde, modernism, and institutional critique. In recent years, he has prepared monographic exhibitions of Katarzyna Kobro and Wladyslaw Strzeminski, shown in the most important European museums. His exhibitions of Polish and international art have been presented at the Centres G. Pompidou Paris, Museo Reina Sofia Madrid, Serralves Museum Porto, Gemeentemuseum The Hague, Moderna Museet Malmö, Kunsthaus Graz, Zacheta Gallery Warsaw, and the Muzeum Sztuki Lódz. He is also the author of numerous texts on modern and contemporary art, and editor or co-editor of books on Wladyslaw Strzeminski, Tadeusz Kantor, Jerzy Grotowski, and the Polish-Jewish avant-garde.

  • Professor Christina Lodder -

    Christina Lodder specialises in Russian art of the early twentieth century. She is President of the Malevich Society, and co-editor of Verlag Ferdinand Schoeningh’s (formerly Brill’s) Russian History and Culture series. Her numerous publications include Russian Constructivism (1983); Constructing Modernity: The Art and Career of Naum Gabo (co-author, 2000); Gabo on Gabo: Texts and Interviews (co-editor, 2000); Constructive Strands in Russian Art (2005); Rethinking Malevich (co-editor); Utopian Reality: Reconstructing Culture in Revolutionary Russia and Beyond (co-editor, 2013); Aleksei Gan's Constructivism (translator, editor, 2013); and Celebrating Suprematism: New Approaches to the Art of Kazimir Malevich (editor, 2019).

  • Professor Janet Marstine -

    Janet Marstine is Honorary Associate Professor (retired), School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester; Museum Ethics Scholar and Consultant, and is currently an independent scholar and consultant based in Maine in the US. She writes on diverse aspects of museum ethics from curatorial ethics to negotiating the pressures of self-censorship to artists’ interventions as drivers for ethical change. She has a particular interest in recognising and supporting the agency of practitioners to make informed ethical decisions. She sat on the Ethics Committee of the UK’s Museums Association from 2014-2019, helping to move their approach from one of policing to empowering.