Collecting Asian Art in Central Europe

The volume Collecting Asian Art: Cultural Politics and Transregional Networks in Twentieth- Century Central Europe explores the transregional connections that have long defined East-Central Europe and conceptually contributes to the field of studies that has, in recent years, set out to examine the regions global entanglements. The volume aims at a deeper understanding of this process by analyzing collections of Asian art and the mechanisms that shaped and formed these collections over the course of the late nineteenth and the twentieth century. This volume thus examines collections of Asian Art in Central Europe perceived through the study of transregional connections. A focused study of Asian Art Collections in Central Europe before the 1990s will ask about the importance of the multifaceted exchanges and connections in place prior to so-called globalization. In what way did the transregional networks, established through personal connections and cultural politics, contribute to transculturally informed artistic negotiations across the regions? In what way can the study of collections of Asian art in Central Europe contribute to a transnationally informed art history, with regard to Asian regional art histories and with regard to Central European art histories? Examining museum collections of Asian art in the region of Central Europe, rather than the well- known collections in Western European and North American museums, this volume explores the dimensions of Central European connectedness across past and present political and cultural boundaries with an approach that considers entangled history, the examination of encounters, and the study of cultural exchange and transfer under the changing cultural and political conditions from the pre-World War I to the post-World War II period.