Persica Centropa:

Cosmopolitan Artefacts and Artifices in the Age of Crises,

1900-1950 

 

FWF Elise Richter Programme (V-995)

Project Leader: Dr. Yuka Kadoi

Scientific Assistant: Anton Matejicka

 

PERSICA CENTROPA seeks to redefine what used to be called ‘Persian art’—cultural artefacts that became predominantly associated with medieval and early-modern Iran and West Central Asia—while reframing it as an alternative narrative of aesthetic thinking that evolved in Central Europe during the first half of the twentieth century. Spanning from the declining years of the Habsburg empire to the emergence of new nation states within its former territories after 1918 and the devastation of World War II, this four-year project maps out the network of collecting and interpreting Persian objects and images against a backdrop of the socio-political upheaval of a once-thriving cosmopolitan cultural region. 

Publication

February 2024

We are pleased to announce the publication of Collecting Asian Art: Cultural Politics and Transcontinental Networks in 20th-century Central Europe, edited by Markéta Hánová, Yuka Kadoi and Simone Wille (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2024). Available as Open-Access (Collecting Asian Art – Leuven University Press (lup.be)

Lecture

October 2024

"Entangled Objects of Eurasia: Persian Metalwork along the Silk Road", Persica Centropa Online Research Forum 2024, Wednesday 16 October 2024, 15:00 - 17:00 CET. Zoom registration required. Further information: https://persicacentropa.univie.ac.at/events/.

News

September 2024  

PERSICA CENTROPA is delighted to announce the publication of our pilot-project website (work-in-progress), "Ex libris Strzygowski: how his theory of world arts was formulated". Please follow this link: https://goobi-viewer.univie.ac.at/viewer/sammlungen/strzygowski/, including some digitised off-prints. This project intends to make an inventory of the unique off-print collection from the library of the Vienna School Professor Josef Strzygowski (1862-1941), currently housed at the University of Vienna Library.