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The Viennese Café as an Urban Site of Cultural Exchange

May 27th 2008

The cultural significance of the café provides a central theme for scholars from the fields of visual, social, literary and cultural history to meet and explore the similarities, differences and shared points of interest in recent research into Vienna 1900. Although the Viennese coffeehouse has long been recognised as a site of importance, there has as yet been no in-depth scholarly investigation of how it functioned in relation to the broader culture of the city at this time. The programme examines the café from a variety of perspectives, with the aim of deepening our understanding of the nature of this urban space, and the cultural exchanges and performances that went on there.

This conference will be held at the Victoria & Albert Museum and Royal College of Art, London, on 17-18 October 2008.

Keynote speakers: Dr Steven Beller, independent scholar, Washington DC and Professor Edward Timms, University of Sussex.

The conference is part of the programme of research of the AHRC-funded Vienna Café Project, which is run jointly by the School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media, Birkbeck, University of London and the Department of Design History at the Royal College of Art. It is organised to coincide with the exhibition Vienna Café 1900, which will be shown in the galleries of the RCA between 13 - 24 October 2008.

Booking is now open.

For further details of the programme and registration, see here, or contact Angela Waplington.

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