Projects

The world of the art market is a small world. Everyone knows everyone and that was no different in the 19th century. The purpose of this project is to expose, starting from a number of "Belgian" 19th-century art dealers, their network, not only their mutual relationships, but also those with contemporary artists, collectors and other art connoisseurs. It is well known that the art trade is closely involved in the production, distribution and ...

Writing Art into Being deals with the development of art criticism in Buenos Aires in the 1870s and 1880s. In this period, artists, critics and politicians viewed art as a sign of national progress, even though the successive liberal governments failed to alter the young nation’s cultural situation that was described as “a dessert.” There were no museums, galleries or official academies. Instead, the primary public spaces exhibiting ...

This doctoral dissertation takes an inclusive look at the Antwerp tapestry industry (1660-1720) through art historical research, data visualisation and data analysis. The study forms part of the research project MapTap (Research Foundation-Flanders/KU Leuven, 2013-2016) ‘Mapping the Antwerp-Brussels-Oudenarde tapestry complex (1600-1700) via network analysis’ (www.maptap.be) and is supervised by Prof Dr Koenraad Brosens (Art History/KU ...

For centuries, people depended on local or regional markets for their food supply. From the late nineteenth century onwards, global agricultural production, international trade in food products, and the food industry grew rapidly. The European governments had to drastically adapt their agro-food policy to the challenges of this globalizing market.

How did Belgium, a small and densely populated country that was particularly sensitive to ...

In the late fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, Netherlandish carved altarpieces enjoyed great popularity in the Low Countries and abroad. Today more than 350 pieces are preserved worldwide. Netherlandish carved retables have attracted a large proportion of scholarly attention over the last decades. This dissertation provides a comprehensive historiography of that existing body of literature and outlines the main research ...