Centre Pompidou, Paris, July 2 - 11, 2015
Deadline: Apr 19, 2015

BIBLIOTHEQUE KANDINSKY’S SUMMER UNIVERSITY
2 - 11 July 2015

PRIMARY SOURCES AT WORK
Nazi Looted Art - the Parisian scene

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

Things last longer than people. At one point in time, when all players
and witnesses are dead, only places and things remain to document
history. Every commemoration of the Auschwitz liberation shows it well:
there a fewer and fewer survivors and soon there will be none left. At
the same time, current events are shattered by the reappearance - or
the eventual restitution – of works of art looted by the Nazis during
their anti-Jewish politics of persecution. Could it be than worth
considering that works of art, by inscribing the past in the body of
the present, remain the sole, obviously imperfect, witnesses of this
policy which has fundamentally and lastingly changed Europe?

During the last twenty years, the crimes of plundered art and its
subsequent restitutions were the object of various forms of discourse:
historical, institutional, juridical or artistic. Numerous symposia as
well as artistic projects are permeated by the crucial, even though
technical, question of patrimonial legacy. For the next edition of its
Summer University, the Bibliothèque Kandinsky will re-examine this
question going along the primary sources.

Getting back to the topic of primary sources convokes the entire
spectrum of their meanings and uses. Sources have a pivotal role in the
writing and understanding of history. They also shed light on the often
tortuous trajectory of some objects and on the legitimacy of
restitution requests. They are frequently invested by complex
intellectual and artistic operations seeking to find out the right
distance in bringing up this phenomenon and the meanings of a past
which inscribes itself in our present.

Nevertheless, a source “in itself” says very little. To make sense, it
has to be articulated by multiple contextual connectors capable of
conveying the stakes, scale and layers of the plundering process. A
selection of sources will be available during the Summer University;
participants are invited to bring up and contribute with their own
resources, used in their research. Confronted to a diverse repertoire
of sources, each participant will be expected to put together
historiographical thinking, critical sense and inventiveness. The
Bibliothèque Kandinsky Summer University 2015 edition will give the
opportunity to put the sources “at work” and to bring together young
researchers, curators and artists around the poignant subject of Nazi
looted art on the Parisian scene.

The Summer University will be a singular experience held on the very
premises of the museum. Key-note speakers from various disciplines will
animate and invest its program. It will be structured as a series of
workshops exclusively focusing on original sources and around five core
sections:

Biographies of works and collections
The museum is the institutional framework preserving works of art. A
collection’s legibility is insured by displays and catalogues through
historical and aesthetic narratives where works act like words.
Sometimes there is a lack of modulation and historical depth that
eclipses the singular identity of each item. Works of art are always
loaded with their past. Plunder broke connections (economic, political,

aesthetic, emotional) consecutive collectors developed with their
works. Plunder dismantled collections. How many collections have been
devastated during the World War II and how much they are missed? Works
survive only through some words on lists that fail to reconstruct the
intentions of collecting act; they represent damaged sources for the
history of taste and reception. By going back to primary sources, the
Summer University intends to rebuild, at the heart of the conservation
site, biographies of works and collections and bring into collision the
aesthetic discourse with the historical concern.

Biographies of archives and written sources
The history of looted art and of its restitutions is profoundly linked
to the history of its archives. The historic legacy is at the same time
intentional and random: some sources survive by accident; some others
have been deliberately destroyed. By their very material existence they
transform the places which host them. The most important body of
archive is the institutional one, but there are also other forms of
archive: professional or personal. We often ignore other existing ones.
This second core section will explore archives’ improbable life: open
or restricted, accessible or lost, looted, displaced, recovered,
destroyed, rendered. Crossed-discipline research will expand the limits
of provenance research. Each list of looted art is sometimes far more
eloquent than the sum of information it gathers.

The life of images and representations
Sources are also visual. Archival images abound (photos, news films,
sketches and drawings). Photography regularly accompanies the entire
process: from the moment of acquisition and collection, to plundering

and all the way to the restitution procedure. After all, Hitler himself
knew the quality of his Linz ideal museum only through monumental photo
albums. Images act at the same time as places and pretexts that trigger
contemporary artistic interventions (destined also to enrich the future
archival database). Learning to read images and between them is at
stake in any reassessment of the plundering and restitution phenomena.
It is important to investigate the paradox which made possible that the
same images that were used in the looting were convoked during the
restitution process.

Constructing narratives
What prospects are to be expected for this archival material? The
future of the archive stands in its narrative potential. Each source
can be a part of a great virtual narrative that will fail to be written
in its entirety. The narrative construction starts with the production
process: the photographer or the cameraman chooses a certain point of
view and a certain frame; lists, reports, letters, obey some linear
logics; places and sites speak. But the narrative constructions develop
further away. The exegetic discourse (historical case studies, memoirs,
literary and artistic fiction) ends up taking the place in the public
sphere. Interrogating the narrative strategies will allow addressing
the crucial stakes of a structurally politic phenomenon. The
restitution process in its turn calls for new specific narrative
devices: archive, enquiry, compensation, restitution.

Sites of history – the Parisian landscape
This transversal theme takes into its focal point the places and sites
linked to the history of looted art and restitution. We will try to
draw a Parisian cartography for these two forms of politic intervention
that will lead to two different experiences: the permanent presence of
preserved sites; the permanent voids, when those sites disappeared
during the inexorable urban evolution. It will also draw the transfer
of these primary sources from their production sites to archival

repositories (ERR lists and reclaiming dossiers now at La Courneuve,
circuits for the works of art from Jeu de Paume to museum deposits,
“aryanisation” files from CGQJ today at Pierrefitte). We will try to
invest these urban sites and understand at what extent specific moments
of history come at the surface of the present.

Documenting the story
The Summer University’s “work history” will be daily documented through
visual billboards inspired by Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas. The
museum’s general public will be able to follow the conceptual
storyboard and its highlights. The different sheets of the Atlas will
be gathered, at the end of the Summer University, in a publication.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE

The Bibliothèque Kandinsky’s Summer University is addressed to young
historians, art historians, anthropologists, sociologists, curators and
artists.

Post-graduate students (PhD candidates, PhDs, post-doctoral
researchers), artists and curators who wish to take part in the Summer
University are invited to submit a proposal, as well as a CV, which
should clearly assess the candidate’s language proficiency. In order to
apply is important to have a good command in both English and French.

The proposal, which should be composed of circa 4,500 characters/700
words, may be written either in English or in French. It should be
submitted in the form of a PDF document and should include the
applicant's name, postal and electronic addresses, as well as the
country the candidate belongs to, and the institution the candidate is
affiliated with.

Candidates are expected to bring along a selection of sources used in
their research.

The proposal dossier will be sent to:
bibliotheque.kandinsky@centrepompidou.fr by April, 19th 2015

The proposals will be evaluated by a scientific committee, in charge of
drawing up the final Summer University program. The Committee will
retain 25 projects.
All applicants, whether selected or not, will be personally contacted
before May, 8th 2015.

A participation of € 100 will be required from each participant, who
will be provided with tuition. The participation will cover
transportation on site and eventual institutional entries.
Accommodation can be offered under special conditions yet to be
determined.

If requested, the Centre Pompidou will be able to issue any required
certificate in order to apply for scholarship or funding from
foundations, museums, universities or research institutes.

Subject to financial modification, some expenses for a limited number
of participants without any external financing might be granted.

SCIENTIFIC COMMITEE

Didier Schulmann, chief curator, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Musée National
d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris
Mica Gherghescu, art historian, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Musée National
d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris
Florent Brayard, historian, director of Centre of Historical Research,
in charge of « Holocaust History and historiography » Research cluster,
EHESS-CNRS, Paris
Arno Gisinger, artist, associate professor, Université Paris 8
Johanna Linsler, historian, IHTP-CNRS

For any inquiry :

bibliotheque.kandinsky@centrepompidou.fr

Tel : +33 (0)1 44 78 46 65
*

Associate partner :

Centre de recherches historiques, Equipe « Histoire et historiographie
de la Shoah », EHESS-CNRS