Dr. Hanna Barbara Hölling

Profile

Dr. Hanna Barbara Hölling Forschungprofessorin

  • Address Berner Fachhochschule
    Bern Academy of the Arts
    Forschung
    Fellerstrasse 11
    3027 Bern

Activities

Teaching

  • Y Module, Bern University of the Arts 2020-

  • PhD History of Art, University College London 2016-

  • Doctoral Summer School, Harvard Art Museum, Havard University, 2017-

  • PhD external examiner, US and UK Universities, 2016-

  • MA History of Art, University College London, 2018-2022

  • BA History of Art, University College London, 2016-2022

  • BA History of Art, Materials and Technology, University College London, 2016-2022

  • MA / PhD Cultures of Conservation, Bard Graduate Center New York, 2013-15

  • MA Preservation of the Moving Image University of Amsterdam, guest lecturer, 2009-13

  • MA Material Art History, University of Amsterdam, guest lecturer, 2009-13

  • MA Conservation of New Media and Digital Information, guest lecturer and mentor, 2006-09

  • Philosophy, theory, and history of conservation

  • Subjects in art history and theory and in American and European Art created since the 1960s

  • Media and technologies of the moving image

  • Subjects in critical heritage studies and museology

  • Critical conservation and experimental preservation

Research

  • Art and culture since the 1960s

  • Electronic art and media

  • Film and video art

  • Performance and performance-based art

  • Installation art

  • Conservation ethics, aesthetics and philosophy

  • Philosophical aesthetics

  • Landscape and environmental politics

  • Mechanisms of institutionalisation of art and culture

  • Hanna works at the intersection of art history and theory, material culture studies, and conservation. Her primary research and teaching interests lie, among others, in ethics, aesthetics, and philosophy in and of conservation, contemporary and post-war art, technology-based media, and the concepts of time, change, identity, and archive (as discourse and physical space) both in artworks and in objects of material culture. In conservation, she focuses on the epistemic dimensions of conservation, that is, knowledge derived from, and generated by, diverse practices, theories, and cultures of conservation. Most important outcomes of her research on these topics were published in her sole-authored monographs: Paik’s Virtual Archive: On Time, Change and Materiality in Media Art (University of California Press, 2017) and Revisions-Zen for Film (Bard Graduate Center, 2015). Revisions accompanied an eponymous exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in New York (17 September 2015–22 February 2016). In addition, her research has led to a publication of edited volumes: Object—Event—Performance: Art, Materiality and Continuity since the 1960s (Bard Cultural Histories of the Material World series, 2021) and The Explicit Material: Inquiries on the Intersection of Curatorial and Conservation Cultures (co-edited with Francesca Bewer and Katharina Ammann; Brill 2019). Hanna’s most recent research concerns the afterlives of Fluxus events, objects and ephemera and the ontology and aesthetics of performance. She is also interested in the critical questions considering the materiality of landscape and land and environmental art, including their ecological and political implications. Aspects of this research materialized in an anthology Landscape 1: Institute for Land and Environmental Art (Vexer 2020) co-edited with Johannes M. Hedinger.

CV

  • Dr. Hanna B. Hölling is Research Professor at the University of the Arts in Bern, Switzerland, and Honorary Fellow in the Department of History of Art, University College London. Before these appointments, she was Associate Professor, History of Art, Materials and Technology in the Department of History of Art, University College London; Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Professor at the Bard Graduate Center in New York. She obtained her PhD from the University of Amsterdam, Department of Art History and Cultural Studies and the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis on the questions of time, change and materiality in the conservation of media installations (2013). Prior to her work in the academe, she was Head of Conservation at the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany.

Projects

  • 2023 Visiting Professorship, University of Rio de Janeiro, University of Brasilia

  • 2019-23 Global Engagement Fund, University College London

  • 2019-2020 Terra Foundation for American Art Fellowship, Smithsonian American Art Museum: Fluxus and the Material Legacy of Intermediality

  • 2019 Dean’s Strategic Fund Grant for Education and Research Activities, University College London

  • 2016-2017 Getty Conservation Scholarship, Getty Conservation Center / Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

  • 2013-2015 Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Professorship, Cultures of Conservation, Bard Graduate Center, New York

  • 2010-2011 The Courtauld Institute of Art, London: The Material Life of Things Research Forum Fellowship

  • 2009-2013 Dutch Scientific Research Foundation NWO PhD Research Fellowship, University of Amsterdam

Publications

Memberships

  • College Art Association • CAA

  • Swiss Association of Art Historians • Vereinigung der Kunsthistorikerinnen und Kunsthistoriker in der Schweiz • VKKS

  • International Council of Museums Conservation Committee • ICOM CC

  • Institute of Conservation • ICON

  • Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art • INCCA

Awards

Language skills and intercultural knowledge

  • English - Native or bilingual proficiency
  • German - Native or bilingual proficiency
  • Italian - Professional working proficiency
  • Polish - Native or bilingual proficiency
  • Russian - Elementary proficiency
  • Brazil
  • United Kingdom
  • United States of America
  • Netherlands
  • Poland