RIHA General Assembly meeting and debates at the ICC

From 23 to 25 October, the International Cultural Centre will host meeting of RIHA – International Association of Research Institutes in the History of Art. The programme includes presentations of the latest research projects, a lecture on AI in Art and Digital Humanities Research, and visits to cultural institutions in Krakow.

RIHA has been operating since 1998 and its members include research institutes from Europe, Australia and USA. The aim of the association is to promote education and research in the field of art history and related disciplines. RIHA also undertakes initiatives to strengthen cooperation between art history institutes from different countries around the world. The director of the ICC, Agata Wąsowska-Pawlik, has been a member of the RIHA board since 2022. In Poland two institutions belong to the RIHA network: the ICC in Krakow and the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. It is with the support of the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences that this year's RIHA General Assembly and other meetings within the framework of the event in Krakow are being organised.

The October convention in Krakow will include, among other things, a meeting of participants in the EVA project (Visual Arts in Europe: An Open History), the annual meeting of editors of local RIHA Journal editorial offices, the RIHA General Assembly, as well as a round-table discussion with a presentation of current research projects at some RIHA institutions. In addition, at the invitation of the ICC, Grzegorz Zajączkowski (digitalisation leader, involved in the application of information technology in the promotion of cultural heritage, lecturer at the ICC Heritage Academy) will give a lecture entitled “Art, Data and Algorithms: AI in Curatorial Practice and Digital Humanities Research”.

More than 35 representatives of institutions belonging to the RIHA network have announced their attendance at the Krakow conference. They will also have the opportunity to meet with the international team of the Getty-funded project: "Modernism's Future Pasts: Abstraction and Identity in ‘East-Central Europe’, 1910-1930s" from the University of Tübingen. Its representatives will also be meeting at the ICC at the same time. In addition, special visits have been arranged for RIHA conference guests, including to the National Museum in Krakow and the Wawel Royal Castle.

On the initiative of RIHA, an international academic journal entitled “RIHA Journal” was established, devoted to art history and published in electronic form. It has been published since April 2010 by the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich. The International Cultural Centre in Krakow, as one of over twenty RIHA member institutions worldwide, acts as the local editorial office, headed by Dr Magdalena Łanuszka.

In addition, the INHA (Institut national d'histoire de l'art in Paris) has undertaken a project to create a digital platform, which will be accompanied by a publication on the general history of the visual arts in relation to continental Europe. The project, entitled “Visual Arts in Europe: An Open History”, or “Project EVA”, aims to present an extensive collection of 470 objects and images, gathered through international dialogue, taking into account the diversity of academic traditions. RIHA has appointed an editorial committee consisting of five of its members, which has proposed partners from 47 countries of the Council of Europe, ensuring that the project has a collective, polyphonic and transnational dimension. Poland is represented in the project by the MCK and the IS PAN.