Revolutionizing Museums: The Avant-Garde Movement in Czechoslovakia and the PRL, and Its Impact on Cultural Representation and Social Dynamics
PhD project
This research aims to explore how avant-garde artists and curators endeavored to bridge the gap between high art and mass culture, making modern and conceptual art more accessible to a broader audience, particularly during the 1970s. Focusing on case studies of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź and GASK: Central Bohemian Gallery in Kutná Hora, the study will offer insights into the enduring influence of the avant-garde museum paradigm, both historically and in contemporary contexts, while comparing and contrasting different geopolitical environments.
In non-democratic regimes, the artistic landscape is subject to continuous manipulation and reinterpretation by Party bureaucrats, critics, and artists, leading to a rhetorical practice that perpetually constructs and deconstructs narratives surrounding art and culture. Examining avant-garde museums within these settings will reveal the resilience of creativity, the negotiation of power structures, and the transformative potential of artistic expression in societies with restricted individual freedoms. This project incorporates concepts and theories from Globalne ujęcie sztuki Europy Wschodniej (A Global View of Eastern European Art), the final posthumously published work by renowned art scholar Piotr Piotrowski. In addition, the project will employ methodologies from the field of border aesthetics as a spatial metaphor, thereby contributing to the understanding of how borders are constructed, contested, and transcended within the context of avant-garde art and its institutions.
During her stay at the ZZF Maria Anna Rogucka researches in Dep. I: Communism and Society on her project
Against All Odds: Contextualisation of the Concept of the Avant-garde Museum beyond Modernism.