Modernism as Institution

Hans Hayden Hans Hayden is J. A. Berg Professor in Art History at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, and Deputy Dean at the Faculty of Humanities, Stockholm University. He received his PhD in 1997 from Uppsala University on the dissertation Gregor Paulsson och den konsthistoriska tolkningens problem (Gregor Paulsson and the Problem of Art Historical Interpretation). In his further research HH has specialized in three main areas: the historiography of art history, the history and theory of art historical interpretation, and the art and theory of modernity. In his research he has reformulated the historiographic perspective as an active dialectical and intertextual relationship to scholarly traditions, in order to situate and to achieve a critical reflection upon one’s own position and its intellectual conditions. Critical historiography is in this sense not a separate branch of scientific history beside the main stream of art history, but rather as an instrument to achieve a deeper understanding of the discursive frameworks of our praxis as art historians; as an instrument to open up new perspectives and problems. These topics coincide and merge in the treatise Modernism as Institution from 2018 (2006).