Mechtild Widrich

Last updated
Mechtild Widrich
Born
Salzburg, Austria
NationalityAustria, USA
Alma mater University of Vienna, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Known forArt and Architectural History and Art Theory
Awards Fulbright Fellowship, Max Planck Society, Berlin, Institute for Advanced Study University of Notre Dame, Swiss National Science Foundation, Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore

Mechtild Widrich is an Austrian art historian, curator, and Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Contents

Educated at University of Vienna, the Free University Berlin (M.Phil. Art History, University of Vienna) and the MIT School of Architecture (PhD History, Theory, and Criticism of Art and Architecture), Widrich taught art and architectural history at the University of Vienna, the ETH Zürich, the University of Zürich, the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, the Eikones Summer School at University of Basel and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. [1]

After a postdoctoral curatorial position at the National Gallery in Washington D.C. (2009–10) and a junior faculty position at ETH Zurich (2011–13), she was a senior research fellow at the Eikones Center for the Theory and History of the Image at University of Basel from 2013 to 2015. In 2014, Widrich was appointed Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of Vienna, and also in the Art History, Theory, and Criticism department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she started teaching in fall 2015. [2] Widrich has held Visiting Professorships at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, and the University of Chicago.

Widrich has been on the Academic Advisory Board of the Jewish Museum Vienna since 2011, and was on the expert committee for the recontextualization of the monument to Karl Lueger in Vienna (2022). [3] [4]

Widrich lectures internationally and serves in numerous capacities on international expert committees for academic publications: she is currently member of the scientific committee of Cadernos de Arte Pública, Future Anterior, Vesper. Journal for Architecture, Arts and Theory, Život umjetnosti and, from 2019 to 2022, served as reviews editor and board member of Art Journal.

Research

Widrich works on monuments, architecture, and performance in public space. [5] In her book Performative Monuments, [6] Widrich coins the title phrase, 'performative monument', to explain why live body art influenced interactive memorials since the 1980s, building on the definition of anti-authoritarian countermonuments proposed by German artist Jochen Gerz, and the speech-act theory of British philosopher J. L. Austin. [7] The concept has been taken up in recent literature on commemoration and public art, [8] [9] and by artists, notably Doris Salcedo. [10] [11] Her book Monumental Cares. Sites of History and Contemporary Art, 2023, is "a provocative volume that is academically rigorous, and it will enrich the public debate on commemoration with its sophisticated reflections on notions of temporality and authenticity of historical markers, siting, and public participation, at a moment when monuments have been at the forefront of political activism." [12]

In the field of performance studies, Widrich is known for her Work on Viennese Actionism, VALIE EXPORT and Marina Abramovic, with particular focus on the documentation and mediation of events, repetition, and the layering of diverse audiences over time.

Widrich also works on aesthetic theory, in particular ugliness. Together with art historian Andrei Pop, she is the co-editor and co-translator of the first book-length philosophical treatment of the topic, Karl Rosenkranz's 1853 Aesthetics of Ugliness, [13] [14] and co-editor of the book Ugliness. The Non-Beautiful in Art and Theory.

Books

Scholarly Essays

On Contemporary Monuments and Commemoration

On Performance and its Mediation

On Architecture

Curating

There is Nothing to See Here, 2010, Modern Lab, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. [16]

Sounding the Subject, 2007, List Visual Arts Center, MIT, co-curated with Daniel Birnbaum. [17]

Remembrance/Renewal ("Installation der Erinnerung"), 1995, permanent installation by Nancy Spero at the Jewish Museum Vienna. [18]

Related Research Articles

Viennese Actionism was a short-lived art movement in the late 20th-century that spanned the 1960s into the 1970s. It is regarded as part of the independent efforts made during the 1960s to develop the issues of performance art, Fluxus, happening, action painting, and body art. Its main participants were Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. Others involved in the movement include Anni Brus, Heinz Cibulka and Valie Export. Many of the Actionists have continued their artistic work independently of Viennese Actionism movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Weibel</span> Austrian artist (1944–2023)

Peter Weibel was an Austrian post-conceptual artist, curator, and new media theoretician. He started out in 1964 as a visual poet, then later moved from the page to the screen within the sense of post-structuralist methodology. His work includes virtual reality and other digital art forms. From 1999 he was the director of the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Krzysztof Wodiczko</span> Polish artist (born 1943)

Krzysztof Wodiczko is a Polish artist known for his large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments. He has realized more than 80 such public projections in Australia, Austria, Canada, England, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Olu Oguibe</span> Nigerian-American artist and academic

Olu Oguibe is a Nigerian-born American artist and academic. Professor of Art and African-American Studies at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, Oguibe is a senior fellow of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School, New York City, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. He is also an art historian, art curator, and leading contributor to post-colonial theory and new information technology studies. Oguibe is also known to be a well respected scholar and historian of contemporary African and African American art and was honoured with the State of Connecticut Governor's Arts Award for excellence and lifetime achievement on 15 June 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Valie Export</span> Austrian media artist

Valie Export is an avant-garde Austrian artist. She is best known for provocative public performances and expanded cinema work. Her artistic work also includes video installations, computer animations, photography, sculpture and publications covering contemporary art.

AA Bronson is an artist. He was a founding member of the artists' group General Idea, was president and director of Printed Matter, Inc., and started the NY Art Book Fair and the LA Art Book Fair.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virgil Widrich</span> Austrian director and scriptwriter (born 1967)

Virgil Widrich is an Austrian director, screenwriter, filmmaker and multimedia artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial</span> Memorial in Vienna, Austria

The Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial also known as the Nameless Library stands in Judenplatz in the first district of Vienna. It is the central memorial for the Austrian victims of the Holocaust and was designed by British artist Rachel Whiteread.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Gallery Singapore</span> National museum in Singapore

The National Gallery Singapore, often known exonymously as the National Gallery, is a public institution and national museum dedicated to art and culture located in the Civic District of Singapore. It oversees the world's largest public collection of Singaporean and regional art of the Eastern world, specifically of Southeast Asia, with a collection of more than 9,000 items.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kunsthalle Basel</span> Museum in Basel (Switzerland)

Kunsthalle Basel is a contemporary art gallery in Basel, Switzerland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">András Szántó</span>

András Szántó advises museums, foundations, educational institutions, and leading brands worldwide on cultural strategy. He has directed the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University and has overseen the Global Museum Leaders Colloquium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Anti-monumentalism is a tendency in contemporary art that intentionally challenges every aspect of traditional public monuments. It has been defined as art designed "not to uphold but negate sacred values". Anti-monumentalism claims to deny the presence of any imposing, authoritative social force in public spaces.

Eva Grubinger is an Austrian sculptor and installation artist.

Giuliana Bruno is a scholar of visual art and media. She is currently the Emmet Blakeney Gleason Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. She is internationally known as the author of numerous influential books and articles on art, architecture, film, and visual culture.

Milica Tomić also known as Milica Tomic, is a Serbian-born contemporary artist and educator. Her artistic practice is research-based and includes working in the mediums of photography, video, installation art and discursive, educational art, performance, and socio-political engagement. She serves as the Chair of the Institute for Contemporary Art at Graz University of Technology in Austria. She has lived in Berlin, Belgrade, and Graz.

Elke Krasny is a cultural and architectural theorist, urban researcher, curator, and author. Her work specializes in architecture, contemporary art, urbanism, feminist museology, histories and theories of curating, critical historiographies of feminism, politics of remembrance, and their intersections. Krasny received her Ph.D. from the University of Reading. She is Professor of Art and Education at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She worked as a visiting professor at the University of Bremen and the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg. In 2012 she was visiting scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture CCA, Montréal. In 2014, she was City of Vienna Visiting Professor at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space (SKuOR) at the Vienna University of Technology. Using the framework of political care ethic developed by Joan Tronto, Krasny works on developing a perspective of critical care for architectural and urban practice and theory. In 2019, together with Angelika Fitz she edited Critical Care. Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet.

Roy Richard Behrens is an American artist and academic who is an emeritus professor of art and distinguished scholar at the University of Northern Iowa. He is well known for his writings on camouflage in relation to art, design and creativity as detailed in Camoupedia and additional books and essays on the subject.

Kuehn Malvezzi is an architectural practice in Berlin founded by Johannes Kuehn, Wilfried Kuehn and Simona Malvezzi in 2001. They work as exhibition designers, architects and curators, with a focus on museums and public spaces.

Andrei Pop is the Allan and Jean Frumkin Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monument to Ramos de Azevedo</span> Monument in São Paulo city, Brazil

The Monument to Ramos de Azevedo is a sculptural set in bronze and granite located in the city of São Paulo. It was designed by Italian-born Brazilian sculptor Galileo Emendabili as a posthumous tribute to Francisco de Paula Ramos de Azevedo, one of the most prominent names in architecture and urbanism in São Paulo. Azevedo died on 12 June 1928 and the monument in his honor, chosen through a competition, was inaugurated on 25 January 1934, the city's anniversary. Originally located on Tiradentes Avenue, in front of the Pinacoteca do Estado building - an important work by Azevedo himself - it was dismantled in 1967, due to the construction of São Paulo's metro, and then transferred to the Cidade Universitária Armando de Salles Oliveira in 1973, where it remains until today, in the square that bears Azevedo's name, next to the Polytechnic School, an institution he helped to create. Construction of the monument began in 1929 and was finished six years later.

References

  1. ↑ "Guest professor in the Department of Site-Specific Art". www.dieangewandte.at. Retrieved 2022-03-12.
  2. ↑ "People in the News". 17 June 2014.
  3. ↑ "Temporäre Installation für umstrittenes Lueger Denkmal ab dem Herbst". www.kurier.at. 6 July 2022. Retrieved 2022-03-12.
  4. ↑ "Advisory Councils". www.jmw.at. Retrieved 2024-01-28.
  5. ↑ "Tracing transformations in the city".
  6. ↑ Widrich, Mechtild (2014). Performative monuments : the rematerialisation of public art. Manchester, United Kingdom: Manchester University Press. ISBN   978-0-7190-9591-7. OCLC   870199284.
  7. ↑ Tumbas, Jasmina (2016-01-28). "Performative Monuments". caa.reviews. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  8. ↑ Dell'Aria, Annie (2017-10-18). "Public Feeling: Rethinking Memorials and Monuments". Mediapolis. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  9. ↑ Bertens, Laura (2020). "'Doing' memory: performativity and cultural memory in Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's Alter Bahnhof Video Walk". Holocaust Studies. 26 (2): 181–197. doi: 10.1080/17504902.2019.1578454 . hdl: 1887/3201494 . S2CID   192553734.
  10. ↑ Long, Gideon (2019-10-31). "Winner of the inaugural Nomura Art Award, sculptor Doris Salcedo: 'I am absolutely a political artist'". Financial Times. Retrieved 2022-01-16.
  11. ↑ Dávila Reyes, Beatriz (2020-09-10). "Mechtild Widrich: "Los monumentos democráticos permiten una interacción"". El Espectador. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  12. ↑ Vujosevic, Tijana (2023-03-11). "Monumental Cares: Sites of History and Contemporary Art". ArtMargins. Retrieved 2022-03-16.
  13. ↑ Rosenkranz, Karl (2015). Aesthetics of ugliness : a critical edition. Andrei Pop, Mechtild Widrich. London, UK. ISBN   978-1-350-02292-8. OCLC   910969637.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  14. ↑ Ground, Ian (July 1, 2016). "Ugliness, in the cry of the beholder". TLS. Retrieved 2022-01-16.
  15. ↑ MacQueen, Kathleen (2010-08-12). "City of Refuge, a 9/11 Memorial by Krzysztof Wodiczko". The Art Book. 17 (3): 50–52. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8357.2010.01115_13.x . Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  16. ↑ "Modern Lab: There is nothing to see here". www.nga.gov. Retrieved 2022-01-16.
  17. ↑ "Sounding the Subject". List Visual Arts Center. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  18. ↑ Hanak-Lettner, Werner (2010-10-08). "Die Regisseurin im Raum". Der Standard. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.