Liberating the Artworld and the Nation in Central Europe: Exhibitions between Absolutism and Emancipation

• In Event: Liberation through the Exhibition and Display of Art?

Abstract

Through the examples of several Prague exhibitions, documented in archival material and contemporary press, this contribution will argue how such art displays served as a visual sign of liberation from existing circumstances in the art world and how they developed consecutively under changing political conditions after the 1848 revolution. Can we understand such exhibits as specific signs of the national-cultural liberation of small nations within the late Habsburg Empire?

Author

• Pavla Machalíková, Institute of Art History CAS (Czech Republic)