Lectures | Renata Komić Marn: Art market and context of exhibiting art in Carniola at the end of the 19th century

Together with the Department of Art History of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana we cordially invite you to attend two lectures by art historian Renata Komić Marn that are part of the seminar Art for Collective Use: Art Exhibiting in Slovenia, from the Early 19th Century to Today. These lectures will be held in Slovene, on Monday, 9 January and Tuesday, 10 January 2017.

The Art Market in Carniola in the Third Quarter of the 19th Century: Art-Collecting Practices of Eduard von Strahl (1817–1884)
Monday, 9 January 2017, 7 pm, Faculty of Arts (room 343), Aškerčeva 2, Ljubljana

The case of the Carniolan art and antique collector Eduard von Strahl confirms Joseph Alsop’s theory, according to which art collecting as the most important and fundamental by-product of art conditions the existence of the other two primary by-products, art history (or the history of art) and the art market. For, on the one hand, Strahl’s art collecting led to his interest in the history of art and led him to write his essay on the conditions of art in Carniola ("Die Kunstzustände Krains in den vorigen Jahrhunderten", 1884), while, on the other hand, his demand for artwork and antiques created special forms of the art market where it otherwise would not have existed or would not have developed to such an extent. Since Strahl’s collection was one of the most extensive not only in Carniola but also in the broader area of the monarchy, the study of Eduard von Strahl’s collecting practices makes it possible to reconstruct, illustratively enough, the art market in Carniola during the most active stage of his collecting, that is in the third quarter of the 19th century.   

Strahl’s Gallery in Stara Loka in the Context of Exhibiting Art in Carniola in the Third Quarter of the 19th Century  
Tuesday, 10 January 2017, 1 pm, Faculty of Arts (room 343), Aškerčeva 2, Ljubljana

The Slovenian literature and periodicals of the first decades of the 20th century refer to the famous Strahl collection in Stara Loka near Škofja Loka as Strahl’s Gallery. This designation originates in the reception of the contemporaneous public, which came to know the collection in its initial form; in 1870, the collectors Eduard von Strahl and his son Karl von Strahl exhibited the collection in the second storey of their castle in Stara Loka, which was reserved especially for the gallery, and opened it for public viewing. It was a proper gallery in the present sense of the term, in which numerous artworks and antiques were exhibited, among them 300 oil paintings by various painters, very many of whom were Carniolan. The collection was publicly accessible in this form until 1909, when the exhibition was taken down because the castle’s interior was rearranged. The lecture focuses on the partial reconstruction of the gallery’s appearance in the 1870s and especially on the adequate evaluation of its significance in the context of the contemporary exhibiting and museum activities in Carniola.

Renata Komić Marn is employed at the France Stele Institute of Art History, Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana (ZRC SAZU). In 2016, she obtained her PhD with dissertation "Strahl’s Collection in Stara Loka and Its Fate after 1918". In addition to researching provenance of artworks, she studies history and significance of private collections in the long 19th century and in the period between the two World Wars. Her research interests also include portrait painting and the iconography of painting.

Organized by: Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory; Department of Art History, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana