since November 2021

Alfred Landecker Lecturer at the Freie Universität.

September 2020 - September 2021

Getty/ACLS Post-doctoral Fellow in the History of Art. 

September – December 2019                                                                           

Post-doctoral researcher, Institut national d'histoire de l'art in Paris.

June 2018 – March 2019                                                                                            

Post-doctoral fellow, Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte in Paris.

2017

PhD, Art History, Freie Universität Berlin.

2015 - 2017                                                                                                               

German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Research Grant for Doctoral Programme at the Freie Universität Berlin.

2009

MA, Art History, University of Warsaw.

2008 - 2009

Visiting student at the Central European University in Budapest.

Research project

How Exhibitions Rebuilt Europe: Exhibiting War Crimesand the Holocaust in the 1940’s

 The project addresses the exhibitions of war crimes that were organized at the end of and immediately after the Second World War, and which were a trans-national phenomena that drew enormous audiences in cities and towns throughout both eastern and western Europe.

This research reveals the ways in which didactic avant-garde aesthetics such as collage and photomontage migrated into mainstream exhibition design and influenced its contemporary technological development and also critically evaluates the way art institutions became singularly important agents in rebuilding a postwar world order, arguably instigating one of the crucial roles they retain today. Most importantly, the analysis of these exhibition practices offers a new critical perspective on representations of the Jewish experience of the War, addressing the central question of the mediation of that experience, while also revealing how early postwar narratives continue to shape current modes of visualizing the Holocaust specifically, and Jewish wartime experience in general.

Publications:

• Art in a disruptive world. Poland 1939-1949, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2021. See: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/A/bo86171323.html

Edited books:

• Rethinking Post-war Europe Artistic Production and Discourses on Art in the late 1940s and 1950s, edited by Barbara Lange, Dirk Hildebrandt, Agata Pietrasik, Cologne, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2019.
• Czas debat: antologia krytyki artystycznej z lat 1945-1954 [Time of debates. Anthology of artistic criticism 1945-1954], Vol. 1, 2, 3, edited by Agata Pietrasik and Piotr Słodkowski, Warsaw: Fundacja Kultura Miejsca: Akademia Sztuk Pięknych, 2016.

Book chapters and Refereed Journal Articles:

• Symbol, Testimony, Evidence: Representations of Majdanek in the Work of Zinovy Tolkachev, “Place. Studies on Polish Art and Architecture of the XXth and XXIst century”, no. 6 (2020).
• People’s! Museum: Marxism, Art History and Institutional Practice, “Sešit pro umění, teorii a příbuzné zóny/The Notebook for Art, Theory and Related Zones” 29 (2020) :69-87.
• The Joy of New Constructions in the Times of Homelessness, in “Central European Art and Culture 1918-1956: A Reader”, edited by Klara Kemp- Welch, Jonathan Owen, London: Courtauld Books Online, 2019.
•  Budowniczowie ruin: reprezentacje zburzonej Warszawy w rysunku i wystawach lat 40 [Builders of Ruins: representations of destroyed Warsaw in drawings from the 1940’s]”, Widok Teorie i Praktyki Kultury Wizualnej, no. 11 (June 4, 2016).
• “ ’Radość Nowych Konstrukcji’ w czasach bezdomności [‘The Joy of New Constructions’ in the Times of Homelessness]”, Miejsce. Studia Nad Sztuką i Architekturą Polską XX I XXI Wieku, no. 1 (2015).
• “Sala Neoplastyczna: Czas Przyszły Niedokonany [Neoplastic Room: Future Continious]”, in Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi. Monografia, edited by Daniel Muzyczuk and Magdalena Ziółkowska, Lodz: Muzeum Sztuki, 2015.
• “Gąsienice i Motyle. O równoczesności pojęcia Pathosformel Aby’ego Warburga i engramu Richarda Semona [Caterpillars and Butterflies: On the Simultaneity of Aby Warburg’s Pathosformel and Richard Semon’s Engram]”, Widok Teorie i Praktyki Kultury Wizualnej, no. 6 (2014).
• “Żałoba Nie Przystoi Elektrze. O (nie)pamięci wojny w dziele Felicjana Szczęsnego Kowarskiego. Electra Under the Sign of Saturn. Melancholy on the Ruins of the Old World”, Rocznik Muzeum Narodowego. Nowa Seria / Journal of the National Museum in Warsaw. New Series, no. 3 (2014).
• “Re-Staging the Avant-Garde: Henryk Berlewi’s Return to Abstract Art”, Widok Teorie i Praktyki Kultury Wizualnej, no. 3 (2013).
•  “Abstraction & Figuration in the Auschwitz Memorial From Consensus to Dissensus”, in Die Transformation Der Lager, Annäherungen an Die Orte Nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen, edited by Annika Wienert and Alexandra Klei, Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011.

Catalogue essays:

• Agata Pietrasik, Piotr Słodkowski, “Promoting Culture in Polish People’s Republic in the 1950s — at the Meeting Point of Practice and Ideology. The Case of Travelling Exhibitions”, in Cold Revolution. Central and Eastern European Societies in Times of Socialist Realism, 1948–1959, edited by Jérôme Bazin, Joanna Kordjak, Mousse Publishing, 2021.
• “Myśl o wszystkich: (po)wojenne utopie Marian Bogusza [A Thought About Everybody (Post)War Utopias of Marian Bogusz].” In Radość nowych konstrukcji : (po)wojenne utopie Mariana Bogusza, edited by Joanna Kordjak, Warsaw: Zachęta National Art Gallery, 2017.
• “Antagonizm w polu sztuki: działalność Klubu Młodych Artystów i Naukowców (1947-1949) [Antagonism in the Field of Art: Activities of the Club of Young Artists and Scientists (1947-1949)].” In Zaraz Po Wojnie, Warszawa: Zachęta-Narodowa Galeria Sztuki, 2015.
•  “Traversing Monumentality - Successive Designs for the Auschwitz Monument, ,” in Moore and Auschwitz, ed. Ewa Toniak, Warsaw: Instytut Adama Mickiewicza 2010.