Kristiāna Ābele

TITLE: From skunstes mālderis to gleznotājs: The evolution of fundamental Latvian fine-arts vocabulary in the second half of the 19th century

The article relates the evolution of fundamental Latvian fine-arts vocabulary related to painting in the 1860s–90s, explored from the viewpoint of art history. The main sources of study were publications in periodicals (linguistic, pedagogical and aesthetic essays and discussions, travel accounts, translations of fiction, some extracts from Latvian literature, art news, announcements etc.), encyclopaedias and language dictionaries, history manuals as well as Latvian artists’ correspondence from the end of the period. Since the 1860s, a variety of Latvian neologisms competed in this field both with already established German terms and with each other. Skunstes mālderis or skunstmālderis (German Kunstmaler) and bilžu mālderis (German Bildermaler) could be succeeded not only by gleznotājs (‘painter’ in standard modern Latvian) but also by glītonis, gleznietis, gleznieks, krāšņotājs, mālētājs, mākslas krāsotājs, daiļkrāsotājs and dailes ainis. In 1868, journalist, teacher and active New-Latvian movement participant Atis Kronvalds proposed a borrowing from Lithuanian, the verb gleznot, for the activity of painting. Although his initiative did not receive general immediate acclaim, by the 1890s further development resulted in a family of painting terms derived from the root glezn-: gleznot (‘to paint’) – gleznošana (‘act of painting’) – gleznotājs (‘painter’) – gleznojums and glezna (‘painting’ as a picture) – glezniecība (‘painting’ as a branch of art). The continuity of this trend was simultaneously strongly promoted by writer and teacher Matīss Kaudzīte. In parallel with this vocabulary, the status of painting in Latvian society rose from a strange, alien field of activity, almost completely excluded from the everyday experience, to an essential component of national culture.

Keywords: fine arts, painting, Latvian terminology, national emancipation, Atis Kronvalds, Matīss Kaudzīte

The article is the first attempt to give a focused analysis of the annual art and architecture periodical Jahrbuch für bildende Kunst in den Ostseeprovinzen that was published by the Riga Society of Architects in 1907–1913 (since 1911 as Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst in den Ostseeprovinzen). The main aspects of interpretation include the aesthetic programme of this yearbook and a chronology of its implementation, prehistory, models and context, qualities of design and typography, identity of designers, highlights of the visual and textual content, scope of and gaps in national and regional representation, as well as influence on other initiatives in the field of art periodicals.

TITLE. Aesthetic knowledge for the progress of society: Impulses given by Leopold von Pezold during his Riga period (1869–1879) to the development of Baltic artistic culture

“An ever thicker network is woven over the world, connecting every country with all the other countries [..]. It is not a net that constrains but a system of liberation, like the telegraph and railway communications, as knowledge and skill make one free,” these statements appeared in 1877 in the newspaper Rigasche Zeitung, signed with the chiffre –d. that was used by its editor-in-chief Leopold von Pezold (1832–1907) – Baltic German journalist, artist, art critic and deliberate champion of liberal ideas. In 1869–1879, Riga was the centre of Pezold’s versatile activities after an important period in Tallinn and before moving to Karlsruhe. In autumn 1869, this rising star of Baltic journalism succeeded John Baerens as the editor-in-chief of the largest newspaper in the Baltic provinces, Rigasche Zeitung, and his ultimate resignement from this post in summer 1879 was caused by his opposition to the political conservatism of the periodical’s new owners. Although political aspects of Pezold’s work at the Rigasche Zeitung have been discussed in Baltic German historiography since the 1930s, his contribution to the development of the art scene in Riga of the 1870s still recently was almost completely neglected in Latvian and foreign scholarship, contrasting to the detailed analysis and appreciation of his decisive role in the artistic life of Tallinn of the 1860s as revealed by Estonian art historians. After the first outline as part of a general overview in the volume 3 of the Art History of Latvia (2019), this article continues to fill this gap, featuring Pezold as an inspiring agent of progress in his art critical writing and organisatory activities, most closely related to the founding of the Riga Art Society (Kunstverein zu Riga, Rigascher Kunstverein) in 1870 and its major early achievements. Quite conventional in his own painting, Pezold stands out as a surprisingly modern visionary in his ideas about the means and functions of visual communication in the society of his time. He continuously reflected on the role of art and aesthetic appreciation as harmonising instruments of progress and emancipation, as well as recognised the role of new reproduction technologies for the general increase of visual expertise, circulation of images, sharing of knowledge and building of networks in an extensive “community of art” beyond nations, classes and ethnic groups.

TITLE. Change of Perspective. The Tallinn Period (1906–1909) and its Aftermath in the Life and Painting of Vilhelms Purvītis

ANNOTATION. All biographies of the prominent Latvian landscape painter Vilhelms Purvītis (1872–1945) and almost every overview of early 20th century Latvian art briefly outline the period between two dates in his career – 1906 when he left Riga for Tallinn (old Latvian: Rēvele; German: Reval) to teach drawing in two secondary schools and 1909 when he returned to head the Riga City Art School. Nevertheless, Latvian authors in their representation of Purvītis’ Tallinn period have left unnoticed that this city was not only the object of his impressions painted alongside his teaching duties but also a cultural centre where Purvītis’ art was highly appreciated by critics and the public alike. This continuous ignorance has resulted in misinterpretations and unverified assumptions.
Exploring the inner network of Baltic art life beyond the borders of present day national states, the author has attempted to fill in the existing gaps of knowledge. The sources of this study include originals and reproductions of Purvītis’ paintings of the Tallinn period, notices, reviews and advertisements in Baltic German, Latvian, Estonian and Russian periodicals from 1906–1909, catalogues of exhibitions and museum collections, documents in Estonian and Latvian archives as well as the memoir of Purvītis’ Tallinn pupil Alfred Rosenberg whose shameful role in the history of the Third Reich does not detract from the fact that some episodes of his Last Notes give illuminating evidence about the activities of the Latvian painter in the Estonian capital. The main intertwined questions in the article refer to Purvītis in the art scene of Tallinn and the representation of Tallinn in his painting while also tracing the aftermath of this period in his later life and work.

TITLE: Attribution of Authorship: Art Critics in the Baltic and St. Petersburg German Periodical Press at the Turn of the 20th Century and Their Contribution to the Promotion of Latvian Art.

SUMMARY: A. M., A. R., A. S., -b-, B-l, -c-, C. W., -d -h, E. B., E. K., -en-, -f-, F. Ke, F-k, F-s, G. H. E., G. H. K., G. v. R., H. S., L. G., -m, -n, N., N-n, -nn, O. G., O. G-g, O. S., O. v. S., -rg, R. v. E., R. v. H., S., S-g, S-y, -tz, -um-, V., y, -y, W. B. M., W. N-n, W. S. etc. – this is not some mysterious code but a selection of signatures found in late 19th and early 20th century publications about Latvian art in Baltic and St. Petersburg German periodicals. These abbreviations are used either on a regular basis, or episodically; some of them obviously or possibly refer to the same contributor but others can be deciphered in several different ways, depending on the context of their appearance.
Studying the periodical sources of the time, it becomes frustrating to be ignorant of the identity of writers who were active in the local German-speaking art criticism. Even if authorship was not disguised, the contributor’s full name sometimes reveals so little to 21st century people that it seems as mysterious as a combination of cryptic symbols. Latvian art historians, including the author of this article, limited their previous and sometimes erroneous guesswork on the subject to footnotes without giving free rein to serious bio-bibliographical interest. In many instances, reading the “ciphers”, as the abbreviated signatures were commonly called, was a tricky problem already for contemporaries, and the prominent Latvian bibliographer Jānis Misiņš in the 1920s had grounds to announce that “any statements about such experts on ciphers must be simply denied” as baseless. It was critically declared with regard to his colleague Augusts Ģinters’ work on the famous index of the Latvian periodical press, Latvian Science and Literature. The local German periodicals of the period in discussion so far have not been indexed in a similar way at all, making any research into this field difficult and intriguing at the same time.
Despite Misiņš’ general scepticism, efforts to identify the authorship of turn of the 20th century press articles is not a hopeless affair and can prove more or less successful even today, with a distance of hundred years and more, combining traditional investigation methods and sources with the advantages of modern information technologies. The reader is invited to follow the researcher on her way from the abbreviated signature marks to obvious or hidden clues for eventual attribution of their owners and further on to often extraordinary biographies. The venture results in bringing together a colourful society of personalities interested in art who were born between the late 1840s and mid 1880s and who represented partly incompatible aesthetic platforms and basically moved within the area between St. Petersburg and German cities, the most distant sites of activity being located in the USA. (Full summary see at the end of the file).

TITLE: Artists from Latvia on the Map of Late 19th and Early 20th Century Europe: A Glimpse into the Route, Forms and Results of their Migration.

ANNOTATION: Latvia still marked the border of the Russian Empire's Baltic provinces and a nation state had yet to spring from the Latvian-inhabited parts of the tsarist realm. Focusing on locally unknown information sources, the undertaken survey shows this aspect of art history as a promising field for future research and allows us to dispute some oversimplified assumptions about artistic migration. Furthermore, ir helps to place the emigre life of painter Johann Walter-Kurau (1869-1932) in a context of related developments. The address register in the catalogue of the Latvian Art Exhibition 1910 lists Riga 12 times, St. Petersburg - 11 times, minor Latvian towns and country places - 4 times, Jelgava - twice and Paris - once, but works by three artists were exhibited after their death. If we include those who were just seasonal residents in their native country, the number of Parisians alone would exceed that of the Jelgava artists, provincial artists and posthumous exhibitors. It should be remembered though, that their sojourn in the French capital was usually financed by post-graduate travel grants from the Stieglitz Central School of Technical Drawing, a rich private college of decorative arts and design in St. Petersburg. One of the lucky grant winners was Kārlis Brencēns (1879-1951), who went to study stained glass with Felix Gaudin. He recorded his Paris period in stylised sketches and made friends wirh Hermengildo Anglada Camarasa. One of those who set off for Paris, was a painter from Talsi, Frederic (originally Friedrich) Fiebig (1885-1953) whose "long road from Latvia to Alsace" (the subtitle of his expert Kyra Kapsreiter-Homeyer's lecture on the artist's 120th anniversary celebration in 2005) comprised a Paris period of more than two decades (1907-1929). Some painterly effects in his early emigre landscapes seem surprisingly reminiscent of similar solutions in works by his former compatriots, most notably Johann Walter who left his native Jelgava (Mitau) for Dresden in 1906 to hold a solo exhibition at Emil Richter's Art Salon there and stayed in Germany for good.Without doubt, much of this migration can be explained by shortcomings in the local art scene, political, economical and personal factors, but whatever inspired or forced artists to leave their native country for some time or for good, their predominantly creative interest in the foreign world they were going to explore, resulting in artworks and professional impulses, made them differ remarkably from masses of other emigrants. (Full summary see at the end of the PDF.)

The creation of biographical dictionaries is a field where professional art history often encounters amateurism, attempts to eradicate it and at the same time profits from its contributions. The history of reference works on artists of and from the historical Baltic provinces in general and the present Latvia in particular, since the nineteenth century, is not a linear development from primitive to increasingly comprehensive forms. It would be more accurate to describe it as a family tree where all members have some common features, but every successive generation has been raised with limited access to family archives and fragmentary knowledge of its actual lineage, as well as containing side branches and obscure elements. The research on reference works and archived materials in the legacy of Julius Döring, Wilhelm Neumann, Paul Campe, Kuno Hagen, Alfrēds Goba, Kārlis Baltgailis and Jurģis Skulme continuously brings important biographical (re-)discoveries and demands critical revision of existing prejudices with regard to relations between academic and amateur art history. In this article, several aspects of interpretation are constantly intertwined in the discussion of this material as a practice in its time and a source for contemporaries and successors.

KEYWORDS. Latvian art, First World War, exhibitions, art and politics, Russia, Germany, national emancipation.

ANNOTATION. “What was not possible when there was peace and the life followed its normal course has become possible in the present times of war and evacuation. The war has left an indelible impression on the destiny of our nation. It has, so to say, forced it out from behind the habitual fireplace on to a broader track,”– the ground for artist Alberts Kronenbergs to write these lines was his joy about the Exhibition of Latvian Art held in 1915 in Petrograd. In 1916, a similar exhibition was organised in Moscow. It had “to show the capacity and achievements of our art and culture to Russian intelligentsia and Russian people”, thus promoting the claim of Latvians for establishment as an independent nation. It was in the “theatre of war” that Latvian art had its international benefits in order to win acclaim for Latvian cultural and political aims. For the first time, the notion “Latvian art” (or “Lettish art” as it was commonly used in English texts of that time) resounded widely in the periodical press of the two Russian imperial metropolises and even beyond when Pavel Ettinger reviewed the Moscow event for The Studio. Referring to the historical suppression of “the Letts” by the “dominant German classes of the Baltic provinces”, Ettinger found that “naturally enough this newly developed art (…) has been unable to escape the influence of German art”, showing itself “even in the work of artists who have studied at the Petrograd Academy”. Yakov Tugendhold in the Russkiye vedomosti identified the prevalence of a particular mood – “a sort of pensivity (…) not Russian, not lyrical, but rather more contemplative, overcast, permeated by the seaside air”.
The background of these débuts made outside the Baltics is closely associated with the preceding domestic activities of the Latvian Society for the Promotion of Art (LSPA). Founded in 1911, it reached the peak of success in the period between the outbreak of World War I and the summer of 1915 before Riga was emptied by evacuations due to the approaching front. By the end of 1914, the Society had assembled a considerable number of art works for its planned Museum of Latvian Art. In 1915, this collection was moved to Petrograd for numerous works from this source to be included in the two afore-mentioned exhibitions. Just in 1923 the collection was brought back to Latvia that had in the meantime emerged on the map of Europe as a new state.
The art of some Latvian authors was “mobilised” to fight for two radically different, competing projects of Latvia’s geo-political future, since their work was also represented in the art sections of the Kurland-Ausstellung (1917) and Livland-Estland-Ausstellung (1918) that were organised in Germany to propagate the idea of the monarchist German-dominated United Baltic Duchy (das Vereinigte Baltische Herzogtum).

Title: The Odyssey of Jakob Belsen. 1870–1937.
Keywords: Jēkabs Belzēns (Jakob Belsen); Latvian art; painting; drawing; prints; exhibitions; St. Petersburg; Germany.
Annotation: Jakob Belsen's art in the country of his forefathers remained associated almost exclusively with the ten oil paintings and warercolours shown in the Latvian Art Exhibition of 1910. Now the number of his paintings at the Latvian National Museum of Art (LNMA) in Riga can be counted on one hand. With four works of undisputed authorship and one of doubtful attribution, this is the largest public collection of Belsen's paintings in the world. Although three of these paintings are familiar to the public from Latvian art albums, exhibitions and catalogues, knowledge of the artist's life has been very poor even among experts, partly because of distances separating Riga from his basic places of residence – St. Petersburg, Berlin and New York. An avalanche of recent discoveries sheds new light on previously obscure periods and episodes in Belsen's life and career. Several of his paintings from the 1920s have newly appeared in Latvian private collections. Numerous supplements to his non-Latvian historiography have been found in publications of both his and our contemporaries. The St. Petersburg Regional Section of the Public Russian German Academy of Sciences held a memorial Belsen exhibition in 2001 and supplied the LNMA with a CD of its materials documenting the artist's productive work as illustrator and cartoonist as well as containing reproductions of private photographs. Some of these images have been used in this article by courtesy of Antonie Tosca Grill in Baden-Baden, whose father was a nephew of Jakob Belsen's first wife. My inquiries into the provenance of this picture archive resulted in a correspondence with Wenedikt Böhm (St. Petersburg) to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for copies of extremely important sources of biographical evidence, compiled by Antonie Grill: memoirs of the artist and his widow, covering the periods from the mid-1870s until 1924 and 1925–1937 respectively, and Belsen's letters to his children from New York (1936–1937). (Full summary see at the end of the file.)

Title: In the temple, by the cradle. The premiere of the new national painting at the Fine Arts Section of the Latvian Ethnographic Exhibition.
Series: Latvijas Nacionālā vēstures muzeja raksti. – 25. sēj.
Summary: “If it will come to writing a history of Latvian art someday, its starting point should be set in 1896, when paintings by Latvian artists were exhibited at the Latvian Ethnographic Exhibition in Riga for the first time,” eight years after the exhibition (hereinafter LEE), in 1904, these lines opened a feature article in the magazine “Vērotājs” (“Observer”) on Janis Rozentāls – the famous artist and the artistic editor of the periodical. The author Jānis Miķelsons (Haralds Eldgasts) continued: “The public was evermore surprised to find ... paintings attracting so much attention as never before in Riga.” In the same year, a flow of impressions from the Fine Arts Section of the LEE overwhelmed another writer in “Vērotājs”, Matilda (Matilde Jureviča-Priedīte): “Rarely in my life have I been so happy about something. I was inspired, I was stunned by solemn, serious and sweet feelings of joy, peace and gratitude. I was standing there, in the Latvian national temple, and, even more, by the cradle of Latvian painting.”
The title of the article’ starts with a reference to the description of Jureviča-Priedīte’s experience at the LEE. As a departure from the main subject of her review it had long been remained unnoticed by researchers of the LEE, but it provides a vivid picture of the Fine Arts Section’s perfect visitor finding a source of spiritual revelation. Since the 1920s, the Fine Arts Section of the LEE has been discussed in a series of studies, most notably by Alberts Prande (1926), Rūta Kaminska (1976) and Baiba Uburģe (Diploma Paper at the Latvian Academy of Art, 1988), with new studies by the author of the present article in the book “Art History of Latvia IV: The Period of Neo-Romanticist Modernism. 1890-1915”  (2014) and by Sanita Stinkule in the 120th anniversary catalogue of the LEE (2016). The scope of these and other studies and interpretations features not only the unchanging artistic highlights that have found their iconic place in the picture of the event already since the first accounts, but also discoveries complementing the whole or questioning certain assumptions, as well as mysteries, contradictions and space for suggestions.
In the middle of the 1890s, Roderich von Engelhardt started introducing new western art in the activities of Riga Art Society (Rigascher Kunstverein, Kunstverein zu Riga) and prepared the decisive turn when artworks by native Baltic artists would be prominently displayed along with artworks by foreign masters at the exhibitions of the Society’s new art salon since 1898. The most ambitious breakthrough of the modern art by Latvian-born authors in Riga, however, took place in an ethnic context in 1896 – at the Fine Arts Section of the LEE. A selection of artworks, widely acclaimed outside the ethnic Latvian society, by recent graduates and on-going students of St. Petersburg higher art education institutions was presented to the public in their home country for the first time. The prehistory of this premiere was associated with the ’art studies in the imperial capital and activities of the association “Rūķis” (“Gnome”), established in 1891.
Already during the 4th Latvian Song Festival in Jelgava, in the summer of 1895, the young men from “Rūķis” had the idea of adding a collection of their works to the Ethnographic Section of the Exhibition of Agriculture, Craft and Industry. Although this attempt failed, soon, Riga Latvian Society invited the members of “Rūķis” “to provide... an artistic tone” to the LEE. Participation at the LEE was the main organisational achievement of this group, owing much to the engagement of Rozentāls in the organising of the LEE. Artists drew “Latvian types“ and illustrations of Latvian traditional activities for the section “Anthropology and Statistics” and worked as decorators of the exhibition halls. The Fine Arts Section was, however, the most important, with oil paintings and watercolours by Janis Rozentāls, as the most prolific exhibitor, as well as Johann Walter, Vilhelms Purvītis, Arturs Baumanis, and Staņislavs Birnbaums, whose contributions received quite detailed accounts, Ādams Alksnis, and Pēteris Balodis, who were just mentioned by name and, according to the press, also Jānis Lībergs. Although the catalogue included the names of Rihards Zariņš, Jūlijs Jaunkalniņš and Gotlībs Lapiņš as participants, their artworks were not submitted. Photographic reproductions of Kārlis Hūns’ paintings and drawings informed Latvians about  this famous late fellow national. Portraits of Riga Latvian Society leaders by Jānis Staņislavs Roze added an aspect of a representational ancestral gallery to the display of the new artistic production. Unlike the anthropological drawings that became a part of the Ethnographic Collection of Riga Latvian Society’ (now in the holdings of the Latvian National Museum of Art and Latvian National History Museum), exhibits of the Fine Arts Section were the property of their authors who offered their works for sale.
The fragmentary photographs show a richly decorated hall that was theatrical and solemn, diminishing the visual autonomy of the artworks, complying with the national pathos of the LEE. Latvian and German reviewers focused on the graduation work of Rozentāls, “From the Church” (“After the Service”, 1894, Latvian National Museum of Art) that, to a certain extent, became the patriotic altarpiece of this “Latvian temple” and its main highlight, along with another painting, “From the Graveyard” (1896, Latvian National Museum of Art) by Rozentāls. Details provided in the press have helped to identify other works by Rozentāls, Purvītis, and Baumanis in public collections, private collections and reproductions. For Rozentāls, the exhibition simultaneously brought financial dissapointment and the kind of affection from the public that all the artists from “Rūķis” had dreamt about. In his person, a new type of public figure had emerged– a popular Latvian painter. A  wide-ranging exhibition of the latest painting was on view in Riga for the first time, with all the represented artists being of local origin.

Title: “Who Are They Singing…”: The Gallery of Bucolic Images and Scenes by Janis Rozentāls between Reality and the Realm of Mythology.

Keywords: Janis Rozentāls (1866–1916), Latvian visual arts, painting, photography, folksong, singing, mythology.

At the turn of the 20th century thinking about art in terms of analogies between visual and acoustic experience greatly permeated the new scene of art theory and criticism in Latvia. The local version in the story of this development can be traced back to the 1898 spring Exhibition in St. Petersburg where the young Latvian-born painters Vilhelms Purvītis and Johann Walter (Walter-Kurau) followed the practice of James Abbott McNeill Whistler by naming their landscapes after musical terms. subsequently, the new phenomenon diverged into a variety of individual solutions, including representations of the act of singing (Janis Rozentāls) and listening (Walter), evocatively sonorous landscapes in the realm between the Impressionistic sense of presence and the abstracting stylisation of art nouveau (Walter, Purvītis), fragile visualisations of nocturnal sounds and expressions of inner anxiety (Pēteris Krastiņš) as well as Čiurlionis-inspired fantasies (Rūdolfs Pērle). In the later course of the 20th century, the vague notion of sonority in painting gradually grew into one of the most highly esteemed though hardly definable qualities in the Latvian writing on art.

Publicēts: Sasniegumi un neizzinātais Latvijas mākslas vēsturē: Latvijas Mākslas akadēmijas Mākslas vēstures institūta 10 gadu jubilejas konferences materiāli. Rīga: Latvijas Mākslas akadēmijas Mākslas vēstures institūts, 2012, 28.–38. lpp. ISBN 978-9934-8355-0-6. PDF izdevums.

Publicēts krājumā: Latvijas vizuālās mākslas Eiropas kontekstā: Apvienotā Pasaules latviešu zinātnieku III un Letonikas IV kongresa sekcijas referāti / Sast. Elita Grosmane. Rīga: Latvijas Mākslas akadēmijas Mākslas vēstures institūts; Mākslas vēstures pētījumu atbalsta fonds, 2011, 67.–87. lpp.

Since the turn of the twentieth century, when Latvian art began to emancipate itself from the general cultural scene of the Baltic provinces, its rising national self-awareness has permeated most art-historical writing about this period, giving rise to a strong ethnocentric tradition, which has managed to prevail in all phases of Latvia's history throughout the past century and still exists as a peculiar 'default setting' for the way Latvians envision their country's art on both popular and academic levels. The focus on phenomena identified as ethnic Latvian involved an art-historical uprooting of non-Latvian (basically German) aspects of the local art scene and distorted the general picture. This article examines the Latvian ethnocentric narrative in its various stages of development in order to determine what should be changed on the way to a possibly all-inclusive, many-layered and reliable representation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the most multicultural episode of Latvia's artistic past.

Recenzija par: Nepieradinātās dvēseles. Simbolisms Baltijas valstu mākslā = Wild Souls. Symbolism in the Art of the Baltic States. Izstāde Latvijas Nacionālajā mākslas muzejā. [Katalogs] / Sast. Ginta Gerharde-Upeniece un Laima Slava. Rīga: Latvijas Nacionālais mākslas muzejs, 2020. 462 lpp., il. ISBN 9789934601002

Raksts par izstādi "Latvijas kolekcija" ("Den Lettiska Samlingen / The Latvian Collection"), kas norisinājās Malmes Mākslas muzejā (Malmö Konstmuseum) Zviedrijā no 2022. gada 2. decembra līdz 2023. gada 16. aprīlim sadarbībā ar Latvijas Laikmetīgās mākslas centru (Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art). Kuratores: Inga Lāce (LV), Lotte Løvholm (DK).

LV: Lai aptvertu 19. gadsimta beigu un 20. gadsimta sākuma Rīgas mākslas dzīves kopainu īsā pārskatā, referāta klausītāji ir aicināti iztēloties sevi 1910. gadā blakus fotogrāfam Jānim Riekstam uz Rīgas Latviešu biedrības (RLB) jaunā nama fasādes stalažām, kur viņš iemūžina trīs gleznotāju tikšanos – autoru Jani Rozentālu parādām kolēģiem Vilhelmam Purvītim un Bernhardam Borhertam (Bernhard Borchert) alegorisko kompozīciju “Spēks”. Rieksta fotodarbs rada spēcīgu “izšķirošā mirkļa” sajūtu un, attēla tiešajam vēstījumam pievienojot zināšanas par vēsturi, var būt lasāms kā aizraujošs Latvijas kultūrai būtiska izaugsmes laikmeta kopsavilkums. –– EN: In order to embrace late-19th- and early-20th-century art scene of Riga in a brief overview, the audience is invited to imagine themselves in 1910 standing next to photographer Jānis Rieksts on the façade scaffolding of the Riga Latvian Society’s new building, where he captures an encounter of three painters –  Vilhelms Purvītis and Bernhard Borchert inspecting the allegorical composition “Strength” in the presence of its author Janis Rozentāls. Rieksts’ photograph evokes a strong sense of the “decisive moment”. If the immediate narrative of the image is enhanced with our knowledge about history, it can reveal a compelling summary of a momentous period of rise in the culture of Latvia.

Referāts Letonikas VII kongresa sekcijā Latvijas Mākslas akadēmijā 2017. gada 27. oktobrī.

Кopsavilkums publicēts: Gaisma ēnu galerijā: Latvijas mākslas vēstures zaudējumi un atradumi topošos pētījumos. Letonikas VII kongresa mākslas zinātnes sekcijas referātu kopsavilkumi / Sast. Kristiāna Ābele. Rīga: Latvijas Mākslas akadēmijas Mākslas vēstures institūts, 2017, 12. lpp. ISBN 9789934872105 (print), 9789934872112 (PDF)

Zinātnisko konferenci "Vilhelms Purvītis Eiropas mākslas ainavā: Veikums, laikmets un mantojums" 2022. gada 16.–17. septembrī  par godu 150 gadu atcerei kopš izcilā latviešu gleznotāja, Latvijas Mākslas akadēmijas pirmā vadītāja un Rīgas pilsētas mākslas muzeja direktora dzimšanas rīkoja Latvijas Mākslas akadēmija sadarbībā ar Latvijas Nacionālo mākslas muzeju. Kā referenti un moderatori tajā piedalījās: Kristiāna Ābele, Aija Brasliņa, Helēna Demakova, Žanete Grende sadarbībā ar Elīnu Kursīti, Agita Gritāne, Signe Grūbe, Signe Irbe, Jānis Kalnačs, Eduards Kļaviņš, Māra Lāce, Dace Lamberga, Kristīne Ogle, Sanita Oše, Edīte Parute, Baiba Vanaga, Indra Tuņa un Liene Visendorfa.