Anke te Heesen (HU Berlin): Frauen vor Mustern

The lecture starts from a simple iconographic observation: women in front of patterns are increasingly depicted towards the end of the 19th century, appearing in a serially structured milieu of different arranged ornaments. The décor that surrounds them as well as its materiality—the wallpaper, the carpet, and the fabric—constitute an autonomously acting image that defines the depicted women as well as their respective concept of femininity. These textile or paper-based patterns envelop the person who appears to be emerging from or being drawn into them, being elevated or sinking into the background. In short: the woman is given her very own adornment or camouflage. The resulting motif is related to depictions of the Virgin Mary, but also to the “Reading Woman,” which furthers discussions surrounding the decorative arts, the interior, or the physiology of perception.

Anke te Heesen is Professor of the History of Science with a focus on the history of education and the organization of knowledge in the 19th and 20th century at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Since 2024, she is the speaker of the Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) Applied Humanities: Genealogy and Politics, alongside Viktoria Tkaczyk. In 1995, she received her PhD from the University of Oldenburg and became a research assistant and curator at the Research Center for the European Enlightenment in Potsdam, the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum Dresden, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. From 2006 to 2008, she was the founding director of the Museum of the University of Tübingen.

Publications (selection):

• Revolutionäre im Interview. Thomas Kuhn, Quantenphysik und Oral History. Berlin: Wagenbach 2022
• Ed.: Wissenschaft im Museum – Ausstellung im Labor. Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos 2014 (with Margarethe Vöhringer)
• Theorien des Museums. Zur Einführung. Hamburg: Junius 2012
• Der Zeitungsausschnitt. Ein Papierobjekt der Moderne. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch 2006
• Ed.: Dingwelten. Das Museum als Erkenntnisort. Köln, Weimar, Wien: Böhlau 2005 (with Petra Lutz)
• Der Weltkasten. Die Geschichte einer Bildenzyklopädie aus dem 18. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Wallstein 1997

Free admission without prior registration.