Topic
The Art Inventory of Bohemia
Since the late 19th century, the Czech Archaeological Commission and the German Art-Historical Commission have been dedicating themselves to a shared project — documenting the artistic and cultural inventory of Bohemia. This study tackles the preconditions and results of the large-scale inventorying of cultural legacies that continued even after the foundation of the First Czechoslovak Republic.
The Art Inventory of Bohemia: Cultural Diversity, National Competition and the Consolidation of Artistic Culture (1895–1937)
The joint »Topography« edition of the Czech Archaeological Commission and the German Art-Historical Commission documents the gradually professionalising art history’s and cultural legacies conservation’s perspective on the Kingdom of Bohemia’s art and construction legacy as a testimony to an old shared culture and new cultural expectations.
The selection of the objects and their art-historical descriptions are shaped, on the one hand, by the Bohemian provinces’ social and cultural diversity and, on the other, by their national polarity. This study traces the poles of a large-scale academic project and works out how the situation of national rivalry became the topographical category of a monument inventory. How did the canonisation of certain periods and art forms, specific construction types and styles contribute to the development of different cultures of remembrance?
