Dr. Melissa Rérat is currently a postdoctoral researcher (SNSF Return Grant) at eikones – Center for the Theory and History of the Image. She started her research project “The Role of Art Schools in the Construction of Art History as a Discipline” at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in 2023 with a Postdoc.Mobility Fellowship from the SNSF.

Previously, she was a scientific collaborator at the Swiss Institute for Art Research (SIK-ISEA) and at the University of Neuchâtel. She has taught at the University of Zurich and the University of Neuchâtel. Her doctoral thesis in art history and sociology (defended in 2020, published in 2022) examined the social construction of video art through discourse in the 1970s. After participating in the SNSF DORE research project on “Crystallisation Sites of Swiss Art in the 1970s” (2011–2014), she published a study dedicated to video art produced by women (“L’Art vidéo au féminin,” 2014).

Her research interests include the history of art schools, the history of art history (19^th–20^th centuries), the intersection of sociology and art history, the interaction between contemporary art, modern art, and art history, contemporary art in Central Europe, video art and new media, and gender issues in contemporary art.

“The Role of Art Schools in the Construction of Art History as a Discipline. Switzerland as Paradigmatic Case of the Tensions between Practice, Theory, and Science (1930–1980)”

While the involvement of universities, museums, galleries, and art critics in the development of art history is acknowledged, the fundamental role of art schools has not been studied sufficiently. However, art schools have been the site of two important processes in art history: On the one hand, the art historical narratives on which art education is based or to which it responds contribute to the formation of art. On the other hand, the importance given to modern and contemporary art in art history courses influences the methods and concepts of the discipline. By juxtaposing the Austrian case studies conducted between 2023 and 2025 with new Swiss case studies, my project aims to address the role of art schools in the construction of art history. It examines the relationship between the institutionalisation of art history as an academic discipline in the late 19^th and 20^th centuries, the teaching of art history in practical art study programmes, and the establishment of art history institutes at art schools.

The project at eikones will focus on the years 1930–1980, a period during which the Swiss arts and crafts schools gradually gave way to art schools. I will analyse how and by whom the history of art was practised at two specific institutions, the “Ecole des beaux-arts” in Geneva and the “Allgemeine Gewerbeschule” in Basel. In a conceptual framework inspired by the sociology of science and the sociology of art, I will use two methods to study these cases: source analysis and oral history.

This research project aims to contribute significantly to the history of art history. It will also shed new light on certain developments, for example, by analysing the artist as an actor in scientific art history and the role of the art historian in art education. The importance of certain groups and institutions in the history of art history will be nuanced by including the contributions of people who are rarely remembered (mid-career academic staff, women, and students).