Iconotheca

The Department of Art History (SDU) has been collecting photographs continuously since its foundation in 1927 as an integral part of teaching, research and the documentation of artistic heritage. The way in which works of art are presented has changed over time in line with current technologies – from browsing through books, to slide projections, to presentations using digital photographs. While older, obsolete visual materials have gradually fallen out of use, they have remained stored in the SDU’s archive. This has resulted in an impressive collection of approximately 40,000 positives and negatives, the value of which lies not only in the fact that it documents the historiography of art history at Masaryk University, but also in the fact that many of the photographs capture the condition of a monument before its restoration, damage or even destruction.