The Department of Arts and Musicology examines art and music in their various cultural, social and historical contexts from modern times to the present day. The members of the institute are dedicated to historical and current artistic phenomena, from traditional and avant-garde to popular forms. The institute, which emerged from the Institutes of Art History and Musicology in 2023, aims to increasingly anchor cross-cutting topics between art and music in research and teaching, expand joint fields of work and develop new ones.
Current work focuses on the following areas:
Art and music history/science of the 15th to 21st centuries:
- History of opera from the 17th to the 20th century: Social, institutional, and legal history of opera, research on singing and audiences; Comparative studies on the history of musical institutions.
- Work processes in the visual arts: practice, media history and theories of printmaking; artistic practice, knowledge of nature and ecological thinking; knowledge production of the arts.
- Art and politics: political iconography; memory cultures in music (socio-cultural, political, economic and media anchoring of music histories); music and National Socialism; music and gender.
- Collection and academic history: Eco Criticism and the academic history of art and art history.
Modern and contemporary art and music:
- History, science and theory of art from the 18th to the 21st century, historiography of modern art: architecture, sculpture and painting of historicism and modernism; Alternative Descriptions of Modernities and the Contemporary in History and Self-Conception; Modernisms and Modernities.
- Methodology of music historiography and the analysis of new music.
- Aesthetics and Politics of Contemporary Art: Aesthetics and Politics of Contemporary Art: Aesthetics and Politics of Contemporary Art; Aesthetics, Aesthetics and Media of Embodiment
- Art History in a Global Context, Transculturality and Contemporary Art from Africa, Global Modernism
- Spatial concepts and contemporary art (installation art, environments, performances, movement in art, art between genres)
- Epistemology and methodology of modern and contemporary art
- Progress, innovation and tradition in new and contemporary music.
- Concepts of Nature and Environment / Art and Nature: Naturally Hypernatural; Nature and Music.
Aesthetics and art theory:
- Composition and reception aesthetics, music criticism and evaluation issues.
- Concepts of temporality and dealing with artifacts and buildings of the past; theories of cultural memory and heritage, theories of style and fashion, aesthetic theory of art and art as aesthetic theory in the present
- Image and body concepts in the art of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries
- Art theory in the early modern period
- Postcolonial theory
- Image and media theories of the 20th and 21st centuries, modern and postmodern aesthetics and music philosophy; topicality of critical theory.
- Posthumanist theories and current phenomena in music culture.
Interrelationships between the arts (film, performance, opera, music theater, media culture):
- Art, music and media culture: examination of current and historical phenomena from an aesthetic and socio-cultural perspective; value and relationship of the media to each other.
- Screen-Media-Musicology: analysis of audiovisual media content, intermediality theory.
- Film music: history, aesthetics, etc., animated cartoons, music documentaries.
- Photography and film.
- Interaction between image, text and theater; music theater of the 20th and 21st centuries; art between scene and scenario.
- Research into textile arts and their relationship to literature; research into the relationship between music and language in different oeuvres, works and genres.
Global art and music history:
- Mediterranean fantasies and global expansions in Dutch art.
- Painting of the 17th century in global constellations.
- Non-Western modern and contemporary art productions; art theory from the global South; postcolonial art history.