Conferences

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Published: 16 August 2026

The 11th International Academic Conference Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art took place in St Petersburg on 14–19 October 2024. It was organised by Saint Petersburg State University and Lomonosov Moscow State University, with the State Hermitage Museum as the conference’s permanent partner.

At a glance

• Location: St Petersburg
• Dates: 14–19 October 2024
• Format: in person and online
• Working languages: Russian and English
• Venues: the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg State University, and the National Library of Russia

Academic programme

The conference continued an interdisciplinary conversation on the history and theory of visual art and architecture, the conservation and interpretation of cultural heritage, and relationships between academic research and museum practice. Its sessions considered periods from antiquity to the present.

Alongside the established subject areas, the 2024 programme introduced two special sections: “Types of Visual Texts: The History of Development and Modern Culture” and “An Artist in a Printing House”. They broadened the discussion of how visual images are created, reproduced, and understood.

The plenary meeting and the Ancient Art sessions were held at the State Hermitage Museum. Saint Petersburg State University hosted the other subject sessions, while the National Library of Russia provided the venue for discussions of interdisciplinary methods in cultural heritage research.

Preparing the conference

The dates were announced in November 2023. Applications were accepted from 1 April to 1 June 2024; the Organising Committee formed the sessions during the summer and published the schedule in September. The final programme followed on 7 October. In-person participants completed the registration required for access to university buildings, while online attendees used a separate registration process.

The conference’s academic work continued in Volume 15 of Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art, published in 2025. It contains articles in Russian and English based on papers presented at the 11th conference. View the volume on the publication website.

Details

Published: 16 August 2026

The 10th International Academic Conference Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art took place on 4–6 October 2022. Moscow was the organising city, while every conference session was held online.

Lomonosov Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University organised the conference with the continuing participation of the State Hermitage Museum. Russian and English were the working languages.

Academic programme

The conference maintained its broad chronological and interdisciplinary approach to art and architecture. Discussions addressed the history and theory of visual art, the conservation and interpretation of cultural heritage, museum and conservation studies, and relationships between academic research and museum practice.

Sessions were arranged in three parallel online streams. The programme ranged across ancient art, Byzantium and the medieval Balkans, early and Eastern Christian art, medieval Europe and the Renaissance, medieval Russian art, early modern and modern European art, Russian art of the 18th and 19th centuries, 20th-century and contemporary art, art theory, and interdisciplinary methods in cultural heritage research.

Conference 2022 programme overview

Preparing and joining the conference

The information letter addressed prospective participants as friends and colleagues, reflecting the conference’s open and collegial academic character. Applications were accepted from 1 April to 1 June 2022. Abstracts of 2,000–3,500 characters were submitted in the intended language of presentation and used to form coherent subject sessions.

Speakers and attendees joined the meetings through individually distributed links. This arrangement made it possible to hold the conference entirely online while remaining accessible to researchers in different cities and countries.

Publications following the conference

Work presented at the 10th conference continued in two volumes of Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art: Volume 13 (2023) and Volume 14 (2024). Both contain articles in Russian and English.

Details

Published: 16 August 2026

The 9th International Academic Conference Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art took place in St Petersburg on 26–31 October 2020. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it combined in-person sessions with remote participation and online broadcasts.

The conference was organised by Saint Petersburg State University and Lomonosov Moscow State University, with the State Hermitage Museum as its permanent museum partner. Access to the venues was limited to participants and to no more than 30 people in each room, while attendees followed the sessions online.

Academic concept

The conference focused on contemporary approaches to the historiography and methods of art history. Its broad chronological scope extended from ancient to contemporary art, bringing together architectural and art history, museum practice, conservation, and interdisciplinary cultural heritage research.

For the first time, the sessions were arranged in three major thematic strands:

1. United in the Museum — visual art and artistic culture from antiquity to the 20th century, considered through academic research and museum practice;
2. Art and Culture of the Middle Ages: Heritage and Perspectives of Comprehension — medieval monuments, the afterlives of earlier traditions in later culture, and collaboration between the humanities and natural sciences;
3. From the Renaissance to the Present — the history and theory of art-historical thought in contemporary scholarship.

The medieval strand was organised by Saint Petersburg State University with support from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project No. 20-012-22040. Two sessions on architectural theory, history, and conservation were developed with the Research Institute of Theory and History of Architecture and Urban Planning (NIITIAG).

Conference 2020 programme overview

Materials and outcomes

The medieval strand produced the bilingual volume of abstracts Art and Culture of the Middle Ages: Heritage and Perspectives of Comprehension (St Petersburg, 2020; ISBN 978-5-6045401-4-5). It brought together research in art history, architecture, and cultural heritage.

Proceedings from the 9th conference were published in two issues of Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art: Volume 11 (2021) and Volume 12 (2022). Both contain articles in Russian and English.

Details

Published: 16 August 2026

The 8th International Conference Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art took place in Moscow on 2–6 October 2018. It was organised by Lomonosov Moscow State University and St Petersburg State University. The State Tretyakov Gallery became the conference's Moscow partner museum for the first time, while the State Hermitage Museum, its longstanding partner in St Petersburg, also contributed to the event.

Borders and Horizons

The conference theme, “Borders and Horizons”, invited participants to approach art history not as a succession of closed periods and schools but as a field of crossings: between cultures and regions, genres and media, inherited traditions and new ways of seeing and describing works of art. The discussions considered how the discipline's boundaries evolve, where established knowledge meets the still unknown, and how museum work, research, and conservation extend the horizons of art-historical inquiry.

A broad chronology, from the ancient world to the present, was brought together with art theory and the study of artistic space. The programme comprised fourteen sections, including a two-day special session, “Challenges in Displaying Modern and Contemporary Art Collections”. Museum professionals and scholars examined international display practices, exhibition design, collecting policies, and ways of presenting the contested histories of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art.

Conference programme overview

The conference in figures

The final statistics record more than 300 participants from 28 countries. Across five days, the conference hosted 264 papers and 55 poster presentations; the sessions amounted to more than 100 hours and attracted more than 1,000 visitors. The abstract collection contained 926 pages of abstracts, while the complete bibliographic volume, including its preliminary matter, ran to 938 pages.

Emblem and publications

Francisco Infante-Arana's Dynamic Spiral. Increasing Energy of Red Space (1964), from the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery, was chosen as the conference emblem. Its image offered a particularly apt visual counterpart to the themes of boundaries, movement, and expanding horizons.

Papers arising from the 8th conference were published in two issues of Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art: Volume 9 (2019) and Volume 10 (2020).

Details

Published: 16 August 2026

The 7th International Conference Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art took place in St Petersburg on 11–15 October 2016. It was organised by St Petersburg State University, Lomonosov Moscow State University, and the State Hermitage Museum. The working languages were Russian and English.

Artifact, Art Object, Argument

The conference's central theme was “Artifact, Art Object, Argument: Object in Fine Arts — Objectives, Methods, Results”. Discussion followed the object from its making or discovery to its scholarly description and encounter with the viewer. Participants considered how archaeological and historical contexts shape the understanding of an object, on what grounds an artefact is recognised as a work of art, and how rigorous argument supports attribution, dating, and interpretation.

The chronological range, from the ancient world to the present, brought together art historians, archaeologists, museum professionals, conservators, and philologists. Alongside established historical fields, the programme included art theory, cult and artistic culture, applied art, the museum collection and its spaces, and the panel discussion “Museum: Shaping the Future”.

Sessions were held at the State Hermitage Museum and St Petersburg State University. The conference concluded with guided visits in the Hermitage and field seminars devoted to the monuments of Veliky Novgorod and the palaces and parks of Tsarskoye Selo, Pavlovsk, and Peterhof. The sessions were dedicated to the memory of Valentin Alexandrovich Bulkin.

Conference programme overview

Emblem and publications

Gleb Bogomolov's painting Aegina (2004) was chosen as the conference emblem. Its striking conjunction of gold and blue accompanied the programme and the subsequent volumes of conference papers.

Papers arising from the 7th conference were published in two issues of Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art: Volume 7 (2017) and Volume 8 (2018).