080062 SE Seminar: Art Collecting in Vienna (17th to 19th Century) (2021S)

Vienna is one of the most important art and cultural centres in Europe. In addition to the imperial collections, the large aristocratic families, but also the aspiring bourgeoisie, have built up extensive art collections here since the 17th century and into modern times.
Focusing on the most important Viennese collections, the seminar will present and discuss the main sources and methodological approaches to the history of collecting, a research field to which Julius von Schlosser made fundamental contributions at the University of Vienna and which has developed particularly dynamically over the past thirty years, thanks to digitization.
Among main issues to be considered by discussing a collection’s history there are different sources (inventories, sales catalogues, correspondence, illustrated representations) as well as collected objects (painting, sculpture, handicrafts), but also spaces and display strategies, actors of the international art market and questions of taste that expect to be analysed in the larger art and cultural-historical context.
As part of the seminar, the participants also get an insight into the research of the Vienna Center for the History of Collecting, which is located at the Institute for Art History.