Objects of study, Professional Networks and Institutions in the Field of Art History in Contemporary Argentina

DOLINKO, SILVIA

Buenos Aires

Workshop; Academic Forms across the Americas; 2016

The Clark Art Institute

In this presentation I will firstly introduce some lines of my research focused on printmaking in the twentieth century, understood as a key artistic production of modernity. I analyze the emerging circulation of printed images; the promotion of prints in magazines and cultural publications; the presence of printmaking in local art institutions as well as its circulation in the international art circuit. In my work I consider the process of consolidation, institutionalization and redefinition of printmaking as a discipline, focusing on the ?long sixties? as a period of significant changes regarding its production and recognition. I support the hypothesis that the boom of printmaking during those years was sustained by an unprecedented dynamics between tradition and experimentation, directly linked to a new openness towards innovative poetics, techniques and materials, as well as to the rise of consumer society. In particular, I will take a closer look at the production and recognition of Antonio Berni's xylo-collages as an especially significant case study. In the second part of this presentation, I will focus on some current relationships between different official spaces for education, research and knowledge transfer, particularly on the role played by the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (Conicet) as the main institution for research in Argentina, the role of universities and postgraduate studies and the professional development of the disciplinary field. Based on the case of the workshop and later book titled Travesías de la imagen. Historias de las artes visuales en la Argentina as an example of the state of the art in Art History in our country, I will discuss certain problems and challenges regarding the relationship between institutional dynamics and demands and some distinctive features of the Argentinean contemporary academic field which have an impact on the possibilities for the development of our work.