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5th Conference of Baltic Art Historians: Art History in Uncertain Times

Conference of The Estonian Society of Art Historians and Curators

Tallinn, Estonian Academy of Arts, 8–9 October, 2026

For more information and the programme see https://www.kty.ee/en/conferences/5th-conference-of-baltic-art-historians-art-history-in-uncertain-times

Visual Culture of the Baltic Exile Communities (Riga, 11 Sep 26)

The study of the Baltic exile communities following the Second World War has often concentrated on the seemingly inextinguishable energy that these communities displayed in combining their carefully defined political, social and cultural ambitions with their commitment to self-preservation. This dual mission required resounding resilience. The importance of their visual cultures in this process, however, has not received the interest it deserves. The aim of the 2026 "Homburger Gespräch" shall be to delve deeper into how visuality in the Baltic exile communities after the Second World War helped them shape their understanding of reality.
This shall be done by assembling conversational partners from various backgrounds and fields to Riga for a day-long colloquy. The focus shall not primarily be on formal aesthetics, text and speech, but rather on how cultural meaning, codes and identity were formed through visual cues. The notion of seeing shall be ever-present in these discussions. What did its members choose to see and what not to see and how did new ways of seeing evolve in the new environments? How did geography and history leave its mark on this seeing? How were space, color, materiality negotiated?

Attention shall be focused on the time period between 1944 and 1991. This does not, however, mean that the communities did not draw on visual perceptions prior to this period and did not reconfigure this visuality retrospectively once the exile experience in the formal sense of the word came to an end in 1991. By incorporating the most varying impulses from periods “prior and post”; and by, at times, engaging their new environments, at others, secluding themselves from them, an enhanced multifariousness and manifoldness evolved.

A collaborative colloquy (Homburger Gespräch 2026) under the auspices of the Böckler-Mare-Balticum-Foundation (Bad Homburg) in collaboration with the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe – Institute of the Leibniz-Association (Marburg) and the Latvian National Museum of Art (Riga)
Concept: Agnese Bergholde-Wolf, Jānis Krēsliņš, Ulrike Nürnberger, Dietmar Popp

Please register for the conference: geschaeftsstelle@boeckler-mare-balticum-stiftung.de

Click here for the programme

UKRAINE - You are not alone!

#standwithukraine #славаУкраїні
The Böckler-Mare-Balticum Foundation condemns Russia’s aggressive war of aggression against Ukraine and its people. As a nonprofit foundation, we work across borders to promote peace and open societies.

Projects supported by the Böckler-Mare-Balticum Foundation:

2022 / 2023 / 2024 / 2025 / 2026

Mateusz Kapustka (ed.): Under Shelling. Art Historical Revisions in the Light of the War in the Ukraine. Published as an Open Access edition by arthistoricum.net-ART-Books, Heidelberg: arthistoricum.net 2025 (= Proceedings of the Lecture Series "Unter Beschuss. Kunsthistorische Revisionen im Zeichen des Ukrainekrieges", Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 2022-2023).
About the Publication

Tetiana Vodotyka (ed.): City: History, Culture, Society 2014-2024. Museums and/in the cities: From saving the masterpieces to reconceptualising the narratives. E-journal of urban studies / Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; Faculty of History of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv - Kyiv, 2026. - № 1 (18). - 212 p.
Click here for the link

City: History, Culture, Society. E-journal of urban studies / Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; Faculty of History of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv; editors: Oleksandr Galenko (editor-in-chief), Tetiana Vodotyka (editor-in-chief) - Kyiv, 2022. - № 2 (14). - 260 p.
Click here for the link

Kilian Heck and Aleksandra Lipińska (ed.): Als der Krieg kam. Neue Beiträge zur Kunst in der Ukraine. Aufsätze zur Kunst und Kunstgeschichte der Ukraine. Published as an Open Access edition by arthistoricum.net-ART-Books, Heidelberg: arthistoricum.net 2023.
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Cultural Heritage Protection in Ukraine / Ukraine Art Aid Center – Assistance for Ukraine’s museums and cultural assets threatened by war.
Click here for the link