[ Konferenz | Conference ]

The Victoria & Albert Museum and Royal College of Art (London) announce a conference on The Viennese Café as an Urban Site of Cultural Exchange between 17 and 18 October 2008.

The cultural significance of the café provides a central theme for scholars from the fields of visual, social, literary and cultural history to meet and explore the similarities, differences and shared points of interest in recent research into Vienna 1900. Although the Viennese coffeehouse has long been recognised as a site of importance, there has as yet been no in-depth scholarly investigation of how it functioned in relation to the broader culture of the city at this time. The programme examines the café from a variety of perspectives, with the aim of deepening our understanding of the nature of this urban space, and the cultural exchanges and performances that went on there.

Keynote speakers will be Dr Steven Beller, independent scholar, Washington DC and
Professor Edward Timms, University of Sussex.

The conference is part of the programme of research of the AHRC-funded Vienna Café Project, which is run jointly by the School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media, Birkbeck, University of London and the Department of Design History at the Royal College of Art. It is organised to coincide with the exhibition Vienna Café 1900, which will be shown in the galleries of the RCA between 13 - 24 October 2008.

Booking is now open. For further details of the programme and registration please visit: www.rca.ac.uk/viennacafe/conference.html

Or contact Angela Waplington
Research Project Administrator (Tuesdays only)
School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media
Birkbeck, University of London
43 Gordon Square
London WC1H 0PD
a.waplington@bbk.ac.uk
Tel.: 020 7631 6128
 http://www.rca.ac.uk/viennacafe