Featured photo: Exhibition installation of “When Politics Strategised Aesthetics”, March 2026. Photo & design: Yevheniia Havrylenko. © Kunsthaus Dahlem, 2026.

• About the workshop
• Facilitators
• Location
• Costs | Registration

Workshop for trainees, master’s students in art history and anyone interested in curatorial approaches to “layered histories”.

The workshop will be conducted in English.

Registration open until 29 May 2026

About the workshop

Drawing on the current exhibition When Politics Strategised Aesthetics – Works from the National Museum of Modern Art Zagreb 1945–1960 at Kunsthaus Dahlem, the workshop explores how exhibitions construct historical narratives through selection and institutional context.

The exhibition focuses on Socialist Yugoslavia after 1945, a period in which artistic production was shaped by shifting political and ideological conditions. Following the break with Stalinism in 1948, Yugoslavia gradually opened toward Western modernism, leading to a complex transition from socialist realism to abstraction. Rather than understanding abstraction simply as a sign of artistic freedom or neutrality, the workshop approaches these aesthetic shifts as historically and politically embedded.

Using the concept of “layered histories”, the workshop examines how different historical perspectives, political narratives, institutional frameworks and personal memories overlap within exhibitions. Particular attention will be given to the role of curatorial framing and the historical specificity of Kunsthaus Dahlem itself as a site marked by multiple historical layers.

Through discussion, close reading of artworks and participatory exercises inspired by artists and theorists such as Lia Perjovschi and Marianne Hirsch, participants will reflect on how exhibitions shape collective memory and (re-)production of narratives. The workshop invites participants to understand curatorial practice not as neutral presentation, but as an active (re-)construction of history and meaning.

With Philine Pahnke (Curator, Kunsthaus Dahlem), Lovre Mrduljaš (Researcher), Gloria Freiler (Academic Trainee, Kunsthaus Dahlem) and Yevheniia Havrylenko (Curator, Kunsthaus Dahlem)

Facilitators

► Philine Pahnke is the curator of 1950s art at Kunsthaus Dahlem. She studied museology and material culture, history and public history in Würzburg and Berlin. Her research focuses on post-war modern art, the complex interplay of art and culture during the National Socialist period and its continuities.

► Lovre Mrduljaš is a Croatian art historian. He studied art history in Groningen (Netherlands) and is currently a master’s student in Utrecht with a focus on art historical research. In 2025, he worked as a project assistant at the National Museum of Modern Art in Zagreb.

► Gloria Freiler is the academic trainee at Kunsthaus Dahlem. She studied art history as well as language, literature and culture in Munich and Berlin. Her research focuses in particular on marginalised groups and questions of representation within art history and museum practice.

► Yevheniia Havrylenko is a curator and communications specialist at Kunsthaus Dahlem. She studied history and archival science in Dnipro (Ukraine). Her work is informed by performative approaches to exhibitions as infrastructures for action and exhibition spaces as active environments for the continuous production of knowledge.

Location

East Wing

Costs | Registration

Participation is free of charge.

Registration is possible until 29 May 2026 via email at wv@kunsthaus-dahlem.de.