Imaging and Mapping Eastern Europe puts images centre stage and argues for the agency of the visual in the construction of Europe's east as a socio-political and cultural entity. This book probes into the discontinuous processes of mapping the eastern European space and imaging the eastern European body. Beginning from the Renaissance maps of Sarmatia Europea, it moves onto the images of women in ethnic dress on the pages of travellers' reports from the Balkans, to cartoons of children bullied by dictators in the satirical press, to Cold War cartography, and it ends with photos of protesting crowds on contemporary dust jackets. Studying the eastern European 'iconosphere' leads to the engagement with issues central for image studies and visual culture: word and image relationship, overlaps between the codes of othering and self-fashioning, as well as interaction between the diverse modes of production specific to cartography, travel illustrations, caricature, and book cover design. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, visual culture, and central Asian, Russian and Eastern European studies.

Kantor's exceptional versatility translated into him successfully establishing his multiple guises as painter, stage-director and stage-designer, draughtsman, actor, poet and happening artist. He is renowned for his revolutionary theatrical performances in Poland and abroad, and it has been said that Kantor was to Polish art what Joseph Beuys was to German art, and Andy Warhol to American art. Recently there has been a rise in interest in Kantor's work. Focusing on his comprehensive artistic oeuvre, from his visual artwork, to installation pieces and graphic works, to his celebrated innovations in theatre practice. This major study is the most ambitious book on Tadeusz Kantor to be published in the English language to date. Co-edited by Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius and Natalia Zarzecka, this volume exposes substantial critical debate surrounding Kantor's works through a collection of essays by exponents of the British art scene who personally co-operated with Kantor during his stay in the UK, including Richard Demarco, Sir Nicholas Serota and Sandy Nairne. Reviews by eminent British curators and critics, including Sarah Wilson, George Hyde and Noel Witts, will address the wider perspective on Kantor's artistic career, published here for the first time. The book is lavishly illustrated and includes previously unpublished photographs documenting Kantor's performances at the Edinburgh Festival and the Riverside Studios, and his exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1976, as well as the artist's drawings, from British private collections.

Since the late nineteenth century, museums have been cited as tools of imperialism and colonialism, as strongholds of patriarchalism, masculinism, homophobia and xenophobia, and accused both of elitism and commercialism. But, could the museum absorb and benefit from its critique, turning into a critical museum, into the site of resistance rather than ritual? This book looks at the ways in which the museum could use its collections, its cultural authority, its auratic space and resources to give voice to the underprivileged, and to take an active part in contemporary and at times controversial issues. Drawing together both major museum professionals and academics, it examines the theoretical concept of the critical museum, and uses case studies of engaged art institutions from different parts of the world. It reaches beyond the usual focus on western Europe, America, and 'the World', including voices from, as well as about, eastern European museums, which have rarely been discussed in museum studies books so far.

Since the late nineteenth century, museums have been cited as tools of imperialism and colonialism, as strongholds of patriarchalism, masculinism, homophobia and xenophobia, and accused both of elitism and commercialism. But, could the museum absorb and benefit from its critique, turning into a critical museum, into the site of resistance rather than ritual? This book looks at the ways in which the museum could use its collections, its cultural authority, its auratic space and resources to give voice to the underprivileged, and to take an active part in contemporary and at times controversial issues. Drawing together both major museum professionals and academics, it examines the theoretical concept of the critical museum, and uses case studies of engaged art institutions from different parts of the world. It reaches beyond the usual focus on western Europe, America, and 'the World', including voices from, as well as about, eastern European museums, which have rarely been discussed in museum studies books so far.