News: It is with great sadness that we have learned the death of our esteemed colleague and friend, Santiago Alcolea, one of the founding members of RIHA, on August 10, 2024.
Santiago Alcolea Blanch, director of the Institut Amatller d’Art Hispànic, in Barcelona, for forty years, passed away on
August 10, 2024. Born in Barcelona in 1951, the son of art historians Santiago Alcolea Gil and Montserrat Blanch, he was an
undisputed national and international reference in artistic knowledge.
Graduated in art history from the University of Barcelona in 1975, Alcolea received technical training in an art restoration
workshop between 1970 and 1972. His collaboration with his professor Josep Gudiol Ricart at the Institut Amatller began
in 1974 and, from then on, he assisted him with several publications. In 1977, he became secretary of the institute based at
the Casa Amattler in Passeig de Gracià, of which he was appointed director in 1984. Between 2009 and 2014, he focused his
attention on the restoration of the building by Josep Puig i Cadafalch. His aim was to restore the house of chocolate maker
Antoni Amatller to its 1900 appearance, when the architect transformed it into one of the first manifestations of modernism
in Barcelona. For the reopening of Casa Amatller in 2015, he personally prepared the museum’s discourse and wrote the
texts for the permanent exhibition and accompanying audiovisual materials.
In 1991, Alcolea joined the international group of art history research center directors that prepared the foundation of the
International Association of Research Institutes in the History of Art (RIHA), which was established in Paris in 1998 and
currently comprises some thirty of the most prestigious European and North American institutions in the field. He held the
positions of secretary (1998-2000 and 2001-2003) and treasurer (2004-2006 and 2007-2009), and represented the
Institute Amatller at the association’s annual general assemblies.
The first book Alcolea published was the result of his thesis, Subirachs a Catalunya: escultures públiques (Barcelona, Galeria
Sacharoff, 1978). Soon after, he diversified his interests and published a study on Catalan academic flower painters of the
18th and 19th centuries, in Estudis d’art I cultural (Barcelona, Daedalus, 1979). Among his most innovative contributions is
the essay entitled Aníbal, máscaras y anamorfosis en el 'Cuaderno italiano' de Goya (Barcelona, Institut Amatller d'Art
Hispànic, 1998). He is also notorious for his work, Pintura gòtica catalana (Barcelona, Polígrafa, 1987), written in
collaboration with Josep Gudiol, a complete documentary compilation of all known Catalan Gothic painting, with a catalog
of each work, and for his historical monograph on the Prado Museum (Barcelona, Polígrafa, 1991 and 1992; Barcelona,
Círculo de Lectores, 1994; Barcelona, Polígrafa, 2002).
Alcolea was particularly prolific in the field of exhibitions. He signed the general project of La pintura gótica en la corona de
Aragón (Saragossa, Museu i Institut Camón Aznar, 1980) and successfully promoted an exhibition to commemorate the six
hundredth anniversary of the death of Pere III, el Ceremoniós (Barcelona, Fundació Jaume I, 1987). He collaborated on
numerous major exhibitions throughout Spain, but his most constant dedication remained to the multiple ones that he
directed based on the Casa Amatller collection, such as Le Grand tour. El viatge d'Antoni Amatller al Marroc l'any 1903
(Barcelona, Fundació Amatller, 2005), Le Grand tour II. Constantinople 1905. Fotografies d'Antoni Amatller a Turquia
(Barcelona, Fundació Amatller, 2006), La missió arqueològica del 1907 als Pirineus (Barcelona, Fundació Institut Amatller
d'Art Hispànic i Fundació La Caixa, 2008) and Ànimes de vidre. Les col-leccions Amatller (Barcelona, Museu d'Arqueologia de
Catalunya, 2010).
He also contributed to a number of specialized magazines, including Boletín del Museo e Instituto Camón Aznar (Saragossa),
Goya (Madrid), Revista Vic (Vic), Studia Vicensia (Vic) and Archivo Español de Arte (Madrid), in which he published a detailed
work on the painter Marià Fortuny (1990), of whom he was one of the most consulted specialists.
Today, in sorrow, the entire RIHA community honors the memory of one of its founding members, notable collaborator
and dedicated friend.
Call for applications: PhD collaboration between the National Museum and the University of Oslo - March 2024
The National Museum of Art,
Architecture and Design in Norway just announced a new doctoral research
fellowship, in collaboration with the Faculty of Humanities, University of
Oslo.
This is the second of 4 PhD fellowships that will be announced in the coming years, financed by the Fredriksen Family Art Compagny (See: https://www.nasjonalmuseet.no/en/about-the-national-museum/research-and-development/phd-collaboration-between-the-national-museum-and-the-university-of-oslo/)
Deadline: 28 April 2024 [CLOSED]
Read more: https://21982000.webcruiter.no/Main/Recruit/Public/4777832671?link_source_id=3454397198
Statement on Ukraine - February 2024
On February 24, 2022, the Russian Federation launched a full-scale offensive against Ukraine. Two years on,
the ongoing war still poses a threat to the survival of the Ukrainian population and its rich cultural heritage,
with almost all the country’s major cities under regular bombardment.
In this very worrying context, RIHA reiterates its full solidarity with the entire Ukrainian scientific
community, in particular the art history community, and with all those caught up in the conflict, who have
often had to leave their homes and workplaces in dramatic conditions. Extremely concerned for the safety
of its colleagues, peers and friends in the country, it pledges to continue to help students, teachers, curators,
restorers and other heritage professionals in any way it can.
RIHA is determined to multiply initiatives aimed at keeping alive the cultural wealth of Ukraine, and to
support all actions undertaken to promote a broadened and decolonized vision of Ukrainian art history in
international academic studies.
RIHA calls on the international scientific community to free itself from colonial perceptions, and to
acknowledge Ukraine’s unique cultural identity, born of a complex historical context that has produced a
blend of national Ukrainian, Cossack culture with Polish, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Jewish and other
components, all too often neglected or misinterpreted. It advocates for a better representation and
contextualisation of Ukrainian art history and, in particular, urges museum professionals to combat the
insidious nature of object labelling, which unwittingly perpetuates imperial narratives. RIHA is at their side
to conduct in-depth and well-documented research into the collections in their care, in order to ensure a
finer knowledge and fairer understanding of Ukraine’s multifaceted cultural heritage.
Finally, RIHA lends its unwavering support to all populations whose cultural heritage is suffering a similar
fate in any part of the world.
List of institutional signatories:
- Bibliotheca-Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Roma
- The Courtauld Institute of Art, London
- Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte (Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art), Paris
- Fondazione Federico Zeri, Università di Bologna
- Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris
- Koninklijk Instituut voor het Kunstpatrimonium – Institut Royal du Patrimoine artistique – Royal
Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA), Brussels
- Ústav dejín umenia SAV (Institute of Art History of Slovak Academy of Sciences), Bratislava
- Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk (Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences), Warsaw
- Ústav dějin umění Akademie věd České republiky (IAH CAS, Institute of Art History of the Czech
Academy of Sciences), Prague
- Institut za povijest umjetnosti (Institute of Art History), Zagreb
- Instituto Amatller de Arte Hispánico, Barcelona
- Instituto de História da Arte (IHA, NOVA/FCSH), Lisbon
- Kunstiteaduse ja Visuaalkultuuri Instituut (Institute of Art History and Visual Culture, Estonian
Academy of Arts), Tallinn
- Institutul de Istoria Artei “George Oprescu” (“George Oprescu” Institute for Art History, Romanian
Academy), Bucureşti
- Międzynarodowe Centrum Kultury (International Cultural Centre), Krakow
- Institut für kunst- und musikhistorische Forschungen an der Österreichischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften (IKM, The Institute for History of Art and Musicology of the Austrian Academy of
Sciences), Wien
- Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max Planck-Institut, Firenze
- Latvijas Mākslas akadēmijas Mākslas vēstures institūts (Art Academy of Latvia Institute of Art
History), Riga
- HUN-REN Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont Művészettörténeti Intézet (Institute of Art History,
HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities), Budapest
- Nasjonalmuseet (The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design), Oslo
- Nationalmuseum (The Nationalmuseum of Fine Arts), Stockholm
- RKD - Netherlands Institute for Art History, Den Haag
- Rubenianum, Antwerpen
- Schweizerisches Institut für Kunstwissenschaft (SIK-ISEA), Zürich
- Terra Foundation for American Art Paris Center
- Visual Arts Research Institute Edinburgh (VARIE), Edinburgh
- The Warburg Institute, London
Measuring Quality in Art History – January 2011
Reaching far beyond the personal level, evaluation today rules in almost every aspect of research, from projects and library activities to the performance of whole institutes. This resolution is the outcome of the deliberations of the Annual Assemblies of RIHA held in Brussels (2010) and Prague (2011), and developed in the course of a workshop dedicated to the topic, held at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, in June 2011. The resolution was agreed unanimously at the RIHA Annual Assembly, Prague, 11-12 November, 2011, by the directors and representatives of the RIHA institutes. read more ...
ERIH and Art History – November 2009
RIHA sharply criticizes the clandestine way in which the European Science Foundation (ESF) has developed and monitored the European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH) since 2001, and is extremely concerned about its present and future application (see: http://www.esf.org/research-areas/humanities/erih-european-reference-index-for-the-humanities.html) read more ...
Copyright – December 2008
RIHA believes that neither copyright nor licensing rules should inhibit the development and diffusion of original scholarly research, regardless of the way in which it is published or otherwise disseminated. The RIHA Resolution on Copyright was agreed on at the General Assembly, Rome, 8 November 2008, and posted 1 December 2008. read more ...