In cooperation with the research project “Minescapes: Socio-Natural Sites of Resource, Extraction, and Knowledge” (Pamela H. Smith, Columbia University; Tina Asmussen, Bochum) and with the support of the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories program, the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences is organising another conference devoted to materiality: “Metals, Minerals, and Material Worlds: Art, Extraction, and Knowledge in Central Europe and Beyond”.

The research project investigates the complexity and dynamics of humanenvironmental interactions in mining landscapes using the concept of a “material complex.” Research on a material complex begins in a study of the natural materials and follows them through reciprocal interactions with human bodily practices, techniques, and skills into substances and objects that are given meaning, used, consumed, desired, and studied by human communities. Each of these stages—the materials; the human–material interactions via skilled practice; and the objects and subjects and their meanings in production, use, consumption, and afterlives—can and often do form self-contained sites of study and analysis. In contrast, the Minescapes events aim, through drawing upon the archives of nature (mines, forests, water systems) and society (archives, libraries, art collections), to bring together these often rich separate areas of study into a unified field in order to raise fruitful questions for individual disciplines as well as for the whole.

The Prague symposium brings together scholars from across disciplines to examine the material worlds of metals and minerals—following them from the geological and mineralogical conditions of their formation, through their extraction, smelting, processing, transport, and trade, into the objects, images, and substances they become, and on to their use, consumption, and afterlives. Central Europe—with its long and densely documented history of metal and mineral extraction, its merchant-capitalist enterprises, and its movement of materials across local and global networks—offers a rich setting for these questions, while contributions that extend the perspective beyond the region are equally welcome.

The symposium will focus on the material worlds of metals and minerals. It aims to contribute to a more integrated understanding of artistic, artisanal, and technological production as forms of human engagement with materials of natural origin. The event will be held on May 19–21 2027 at the Academic Conference Centre, Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Husova 4, Prague 1.

Please submit abstracts by 1 October 2026 to: minescapes2027@gmail.com.

Full CfP: https://www.udu.cas.cz/archiv/content_cz/cfp_prague_symposium_metals__minerals__and_material_worlds.pdf