Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen has received a Getty Connecting Art Histories grant to support the Modernism's Future Pasts research initiative led by Professor Megan Luke and Dr Katia Denysova.
Modernism's Future Pasts is a travelling research seminar that considers the emergence of abstraction from an East-Central European perspective, challenging the overtly Westernized and Sovietized narratives of modern art in the region. A network of early and mid-career researchers and curators from the countries of the former Eastern bloc within Europe and the Soviet Union (particularly Ukraine) will visit collections at institutions across Poland (2025), the Czech Republic (2026) and Ukraine (or Estonia depending on the geopolitical situation) and partner with local repositories to digitize and disseminate archival documents and artworks. In tandem with this initiative, the organizers plan to host a capstone winter school at the Universität Tübingen (2027), where participants will join with other scholars working on the history of abstraction to discuss methodology, terminology, and intellectual frameworks. Scholarship by network participants will be translated and shared on a peer-reviewed, open-source publication for international academic audiences.
The project strives to generate an increased international appreciation of the heterogeneity of the region's modernist artistic practices and institutional structures while fostering a greater mutual understanding of academic cultures within the region and beyond. The network will work to bridge the existing divide between the two sub-regions that have structured the study of abstract art and design in this cultural space: the former republics of the USSR and its satellite states.
