Julian Adoff

Julian is a Ph.D. Candidate in Art History at the University of Illinois Chicago with a concentration in Central and Eastern European Studies. Julian is interested in challenging modes of thought surrounding the predominance of art historical methodologies that prioritise conceptions of art from a Western European point of view. His research investigates Habsburg-born artists and their roles in national identity creation in the 19th and 20th centuries, drawing on Critical Theory, Jewish Studies, and the History of Graphic Design. His research has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays DDRA and the UIC Provost Graduate Research Award. He is the first dual degree student to graduate from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2019, where he received an MA in Critical Studies and an MFA in Visual Studies. He received his BA in Studio Art from Linfield College in May 2016.

Juliane Debeusscher

Juliane is a postdoctoral researcher at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Her interests focus on transnational artistic exchange across Europe during the Cold War, with a particular interest on the medium of exhibition as a platform of visibility. She is working on a monograph on this topic, with particular attention to the circulations between Central Europe and Southern Europe in the 1970s. As a visiting research fellow at the Centre for Modern Art & Theory, she is developing a project on drawing exhibitions in Czechoslovakia and their related international networks. She is member of several projects and groups, including Equipo Comunicación: Publishing, Cultural Criticism and Anti-Francoism, 1969–1979 and the Spanish Research Network on Central and Eastern Europe (REIECO).

Marta Filipová

In her research, Marta concentrates on the questions of identity, whether political, national or gender, and its relation to modern art and design. Currently she examines this topic looking at exhibitionary cultures and the representation of interwar Czechoslovakia at world’s fairs. As a child, Marta wanted to be an artist and later a fashion designer. She soon recognised this was not meant to be and found her strength in the theory and history of fields. She still occasionally enjoys painting and her sawing skills came useful when making face masks during the pandemic. Marta also likes spending time with her boys and her erratic dog, cycling, hiking and reading.


Marta’s favourite artwork: F. Goya, The Dog (c. 1819-1823), Madrid, Museo del Prado.

Ladislav Kesner

Ladislav lectures about art theory and the history of modern art at the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University in Brno. He also works as a senior researcher in the Centre of Advanced Brain and Consciousness Studies at the National Institute of Mental Health. His research focuses primarily on the cognitive and affective mechanisms of perception and experience of (art and media) pictures and picture-texts using psychological, behavioural, and neuroimaging methods. Ladislav graduated from the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague; he did his postgraduate research at the University of California in Berkeley and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. As a researcher, he worked, among other institutions, at the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and Humanities in Los Angeles, Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften in Vienna, and Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He lectured as a hosting professor at the University of Chicago and the Humboldt University in Berlin. Ladislav is the author or co-author of more than 15 books.


Ladislav’s favourite artwork: N. De Staël, Bottles, Oil on canvas.

Cosmin Minea

Cosmin is postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Art History. He leads an individual project financed by the Czech Grant Agency about the formation of the architectural heritage and the first art history writings in Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Bukovina, between 1860 and 1930. He has a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Birmingham about restorations and writings about architectural monuments in Romania in the 19th and 20th centuries. He is more generally interested in how architecture gains meaning for different persons, social groups and political discourses. Cosmin is also affiliated with New Europe College, Bucharest where he is member of a research group looking at the environmental history of modern Romania.

Alena Pomajzlová

Alena lectures about the history of modern art at the Departement of ARt History at Masaryk University. She studied Art History and Italien at the Charles University in Prague, then she worked as a curator of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art in the National Gallery Prague. Her research focuses on modern Czech art and its relations with European art. She is the author of thematic exhibitions e.g. about the grotesqueness in Czech Art, Expressionism and Futurism and monographic exhibitions about Otto Gutfcreund, Josef Čapek, Růžena Zátková. She is currently researching the relationship between image and word in modern art.


Alena´s  favourite artwork: Růžena Zátková, The Ram, 1916

Matthew Rampley

Matthew is extra-ordinary professor of art history at Masaryk University. His interests focus on two main areas: the cultural politics of art and architecture in central Europe from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth, and questions in aesthetics, neuroscience and the historiography of art. Previous books include: The Vienna School of Art History (2013), Liberalism, Nationalism and Design Reform in the Habsburg Empire (2020, with Nóra Veszprémi and Markian Prokopovych) and The Museum Age in Austria-Hungary (2021, also with Nóra and Markian). He Is currently researching modernist architecture and Catholic culture in interwar central Europe.


Matthew’s favourite artwork: Cornelia Parker, Cold Dark Matter (2019).

Marcela Rusinko

Marcela is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Art History (Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno). Her focus is on modern and contemporary art in East-Central Europe, collecting art, material cultures, provenance research, the art market, and totalitarianisms of the Cold War totalitarianism. Her research concentrates on the theory and history and the psychological and sociological aspects of collecting. In addition to art history, she studied economics and philosophy; worked as a public art museum curator, art market journalist, and editor-in-chief. In her free time, she enjoys traveling and discovering sites of ancient and antique history. She loves archives and libraries, museum cafés and shops, outdoor camping, mountain hiking, aquaristics, TCM (traditional Chinese medicine), Japanese cuisine, French music, Baltic seacoast, and cats; all ideally experienced with her family.


Marcela’s favourite artwork: Diver (480-470 BC), Fresco, Paestum, Italy.

Julia Secklehner

Julia is a postdoctoral researcher on the collaborative grant project ‘Continuity/Rupture: Art and Architecture in Central Europe 1918–1939‘, where she works on the role of regional cultures in modern Central European art and visual culture. Her wider research focuses on art and design in twentieth-century Central Europe with a particular interest in questions of gender and minority representation. Additionally, Julia works on satirical magazines, caricature and cartoons, and is currently co-writing a graphic novel as part of The Lausanne Project, which she also co-convenes. She is also a lead on the project ‘Creativity from Vienna to the world: transatlantic exchanges in design and pedagogy’ and an editorial board member of Art East Central and the Journal of Austrian-American History.


Julia’s favourite artwork: H. Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1510), Madrid, Museo del Prado.

Students

Veronika Halamová

Veronika explores the possibilities the field of art history can gain from an interdisciplinary scientific approach. In her Ph.D. research, she explores the meaning-making process one undertakes when looking at a piece of art. Veronika does so from perspectives derived from fields such as philosophy, literary studies, psychology, and of course, art history, too. During her BA and MA degrees, she dedicated her research to different aspects of the work of Aby Warburg, came across the field of neuroaesthetics, and has loved it ever since. Except for art history, Veronika is interested in marketing (mainly on social media), and luckily, she is currently doing her dream job of curating art-oriented social media for Centre for Modern Art & Theory.

Veronika’s favourite artwork: R. Begum, No. 905 (2019), Paint on powder-coated aluminium.

Petr Janáč

Petr is a Ph.D. student of art history and a freelance architect. His main research interest focuses on different currents of the modern architectural movement. Currently, he focuses on architects‘ houses, which represent complete realisations of architects‘ visions. These houses raise questions about self-representation, architect status in society, and villa as a building type. Essential aspects of his work as an architect are unexpected spacial moments and poetic visual quality. He also emphasises respect and awareness for past building traditions and raises environmental questions. Petr likes experiencing new places in his free time, including walking, hiking, and riding a mountain bike. He also enjoys relaxing while creating and renovating things at home and spending time with friends and family.

Petr’s favourite artwork: O. Rothmayer, Rothmayer’s villa (1928–1929), Prague.

Natalia Keller

Natalia’s Ph.D. project explores the art scene of the Polish interwar period, particularly the circles of printmakers, artists involved in the state-building mission, and women artists, with the focus on the art and life of Wiktoria Goryńska. Before joining the group of Ph.D. students at Masaryk University, Natalia worked in various cultural institutions in Europe and South America, among others, the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam and the National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago de Chile. She curated shows presenting different types of works on paper: from Francisco Goya’s print series to Italian Baroque drawings to ukiyo-e Japanese prints. Her main research interests include art and print culture of the first half of the 20th century in Europe, questions of modernism, gender studies, and women artists. In her spare time, she loves traveling with her family and visiting friends from around the globe.


Natalia’s favourite artwork: W. Goryńska, Self Portrait with the Telephone (1930), London, Abbott and Holder.

Valéria Kršiaková

Valéria is a Ph.D. student and a researcher at the Department of Art History at Masaryk University working on the grant project ‚Beyond the Village. Folk Cultures as Agents of Modernity, 1918–1945.‘ She studied art history at the Comenius University in Bratislava, after which she continued her master’s studies at the Masaryk University in Brno and the Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in Prague. She specialises in the modern art and visual culture of the 20th century in Central Europe. In her dissertation, she focuses on vernacular photography of interwar Czechoslovakia. Currently, she is a junior curator of modern painting at the Slovak National Gallery and an external curator of photography at the Slovak Museum of Design.


Valéria’s favourite artwork: Cyprián Majerník – Lovers at Periphery , 20. storočie, 1. polovica, 1935, Slovenská národná galéria, SNG, https://www.webumenia.sk/dielo/SVK:SNG.K_6037.

Pavol Múdry

Pavol’s research focuses on Slovak art. Specifically, he is interested in artistic frameworks in a local context and considers the history of art institutions, mainly museums of art and galleries. His current main focus is the history of the Slovak National Gallery in the period after the Second World War and the building of its collections. Pavol loves when he finds some less known art pieces with unexpected artistic styles and themes, which run against the telelogical order of styles. In his free time, he appreciates the silence of nature, swimming, and philosophical literature.

Pavol’s favourite artwork: J. Ensor, Les Masques Singuliers (1892), Fin-de-Siècle Museum.

Iveta Neuschlová

Iveta originally comes from an environment combining various artistic disciplines. Art history was an obvious choice for her. However, she is not only an art historian but also an active artist. Iveta is a curator and a member of the art group NEUSCHL, which she founded with her two brothers. She is devoted to painting and jewelry making.  In her research, she focuses mainly on modern and contemporary art, cognitive science, philosophy, and the philosophy of mind. The topic of her dissertation is research on the artistic process in sculpture. She is also interested in African and Mayan art and culture, as well as abstract photography.


Iveta’s favourite artwork: P. Bruegel: The Tower of Babel. Kunsthistorishes Museum, Vienna.

Jakub Sochor

Jakub collaborates externally with the Institute of Musicology of the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University, where he lectures on architecture, especially from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In his publishing activity, he focuses on modern art and its interdisciplinary overlaps, mainly avant-garde literature and industrial design. Modern art and its interdisciplinary overlaps are also related to the focus of his doctoral research, which is based on studying the consequences of the streamlined design of Czechoslovak Tatra vehicles and modern art and architecture. He also strives to popularize art and architecture history through cooperation with educational and cultural institutions (for example, TIC Brno), where he works on lecture programs and thematic tours.


Jakub’s favourite artwork: G. de Chirico, Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1914).

Jakub Straka

Jakub deals with the artistic and cultural history of the 20th century, the history of totalitarian regimes and related issues of trauma and memory. He won the Professor Milan Togner Award for his study ‚The Germans and Lidice: The Story of Art‘ (2023). In his research, he focuses on the period of political liberalisation in communist Czechoslovakia and cultural exchange with Western countries. Since 2018, he has been working as a specialist and assistant project manager at Sdružení PAMĚŤ z.s.


Jakub’s favourite artwork: G. Baselitz, Die große Nacht im Eimer (1962–1963).

External Members

Christian Drobe

Christian is a Research Fellow at the Art History Department at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. He studied Art History, German literature and History at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. His research focusses on figurative painting, New Objectivity, art during the Nazi reign and the conservative branches of modernism. He published about Emil Nolde, Rudolf Schlichter, Ernst Wilhelm Nay or Magic Realism. His dissertation project on the reception of classicism in German modernism was published in 2022 (Verdächtige Ambivalenz. Klassizismus in der Moderne 1920–1960). Recent interests have been representations of youth, masculinity and other strands of traditional imagery in Austrian, Hungarian and Czech art. In his free time, he likes to play basketball, read or try the best Moravian wine.


Christian’s favourite artwork: M. Beckmann, The Lodge (1928), Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie.

Jana Hájková

Jana is the team administrator responsible for all the projects, events, publications, travels, and daily administrations. She is the one behind the scenes ensuring that everything runs smoothly.


Jana’s favourite artwork: E. Johansson (@erik.joh), Impact (2016).

‚The image that touched me most recently is the work of Erik Johansson. I chose photography as this is the language of art that is contemporary and clear. Sometimes I feel that the older an art piece is, the more difficult it is for me to understand. I often feel that I miss the message the artist wanted to articulate. And it is amazing to have the team of art historians around to help me see what I was missing.‘

Petra Lexová

Petra is a Ph.D. student at the History of Art Department at Masaryk University in Brno. She is simultaneously working as an Assistant Professor at the Arts and Culture Sciences Department in České Budějovice. Before her Ph.D., she worked as a curator of the modern art collection in Alšova South Bohemia Gallery. Today, she does this job occasionally. Petra is also working as an art journalist and has been an editor of Artalk for six years. She periodically publishes art reviews and foreign art news, and writes about culture and architecture for the non-profit journal Milk&Honey journal in České Budějovice. Petra has also participated in creating the Brno database of Open Studios artists.
In her Ph.D. research, she focuses on Czech Object Sculpture Art from 1960 to 1980 in the backyard of Central European Late Modernism. The main objective of this project is to create a comprehensive study that leads to the understanding of specific forms of Czech object art and their position in the Central European and international context. Petra is interested in modern and contemporary architecture and public space in her free time. In 2021 she got the Alfred Bader fellowship for excellent Ph.D. students, and in 2022 Masaryk University’s Rector’s Award for Outstanding Artistic Activity.

Petra’s favourite artwork: Pieces by American sculptor Ruth Asawa (1926–2013)

Ancuta Maria Mortu

Ancuta Mortu is a research fellow at Masaryk University, where she contributes to the MASH Junior project titled ‚Remote Access: Understanding Art from the Distant Past.’ Prior to coming to Brno, she completed a Ph.D. on the genealogy of psychological aesthetics (EHESS, Paris) and held postdoctoral fellowships at Freie Universität Berlin, The Research Institute of the University of Bucharest, and at New Europe College – Institute for Advanced Study. Her research projects are focused on studying the cognitive underpinnings of art appreciation across the fields of aesthetics, art history, and anthropology of art.

Jakub Bulvas Stejskal

Jakub is currently thinking a lot about the nature of art-historical understanding; how it relates to art’s „monumentality,“ and how it may be something art objects themselves prescribe to their future art historians (imagine that!). An art historian should know better than indulge in such extravagant thoughts, but then again, Jakub is no trained art historian (he holds a Ph.D. in aesthetics).

Jakub’s favourite artwork: Swift Dog (Hunkpapa Lakota/Teton Sioux), Swift Dog Strikes an Enemy (c. 1880), New York City, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Kateřina Vajdáková

Kateřina’s research focuses on Netherlandish drawing art and its collecting in Central Europe. As part of her doctoral studies, she deals with mapping the collecting activities of Arnold Skutezky with an emphasis on his collection of Netherlandish drawings. Her research also focuses on his other activities in the wool industry, amateur photography, family history, and Skutezky’s personal motivations in building collections. In addition to historical research in the archives, she loves nature, especially picking herbs and their use in natural medicine. She likes to spend time running, practicing yoga, or just sitting in the park with a book by Remarque.

Kateřina’s favourite artwork: Delft Blauw lamp, which she bought in the market in the Netherlands.

Nóra Veszprémi

Nóra is an art historian focusing on 19th and early 20th century central Europe, especially Hungary. She is interested in the relationship between art and historical memory, the politics of landscape and genre painting, and the role of visual culture and its institutions in shaping national and other identities. She is currently a research fellow on the European Research Council-funded project ‚Continuity/Rupture: Art and Architecture in Central Europe 1918–1939‘ (@craace1918_39) based at Masaryk University. Within the project, she is responsible for the theme ‚Contested Histories: Monuments, Memory and Representations of the Historical Past,‘ and she is working on a monograph exploring this topic. Before this, she was involved in another large research project at the University of Birmingham, which focused on museums in Austria-Hungary. The project resulted in two co-authored books ‚Liberalism, Nationalism and Design Reform in the Habsburg Empire: Museums of Design, Industry and the Applied Arts‘ and ‚The Museum Age in Austria-Hungary: Art and Empire in the Long Nineteenth Century‘ (both written with Matthew Rampley and Markian Prokopovych). She is also the author of a book on romanticism and popular taste in early 19th century Hungary ‚Fölfújt pipere és költői mámor: Romantika és művészeti közízlés a reformkori Magyarországon‘.


Nóra’s favourite artwork: J. Rippl-Rónai, My Father and Uncle Piacsek Drinking Red Wine (1907), Budapest, Magyar Nemzeti Galéria.

Mark Richard Windsor

Mark Windsor is a Research Fellow working on a team project titled ‚Remote Access: Understanding Art from the Distant Past.‘ Mark specialises in aesthetics and philosophy of art in the analytic tradition. Having originally studied art history and theory, he has an ongoing research interest in understanding modern and contemporary art practices. Currently, he is developing an account of aesthetic experiences of objects that evoke the presence of persons or events connected with their past.


Mark’s favourite artwork: W. Sickert, Brighton Pierrots (1915), London, Tate Britain.