Under the pressure of politics. Institute of Art History at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, between the rise of Stalinism and Prague Spring, 1950-70
Abstract
The chapter maps the period of twenty years at the Department of Art History at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, from the onset of Stalinism and studentocracy, through the "golden" sixties, to the sobriety following the events of the Prague Spring. Although several teachers were forced to leave the department for political reasons at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s and dozens of students were not allowed to finish their studies because of their class origin, the second half of the 1950s and especially the following decade represented a stable stage in the history of the department of art history at the university.
This was caused by a growing number of teachers and specialized subjects, as well as methodological enrichment of the field and growing interest in modern art. The hegemony of the department as a leading art history institution in Czechoslovakia was disrupted by the establishment of the Cabinet for Theory and History of Art at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, which then became the flagship of Czech art history, but also a partner of the Prague Department.