The www.forgottenheritage.eu database was created in 2018 as part of the “Forgotten Heritage: European Avant-garde Art Online” project, an initiative by the Arton Foundation (www.fundacjaarton.pl) within the Creative Europe programme. The project was realized in collaboration with the Luca School of Arts (https://www.luca-arts.be/nl), the Office for Photography (croatian-photography.com) and the KUMU Art Museum (https://kumu.ekm.ee/en/), with the goal of digitizing and making available online works by avant-garde artists from Poland, Croatia, Belgium and Estonia, with a focus on the 1960s and 1970s. Within the initiative, the partners conducted research in numerous archives, both private and institutional, then studied and arranged them, and made them available in a database designed and created by the Plural collective.
From 2016 to 2018, the project’s research team comprised Marika Kuźmicz, Sandra Križić Roban, Lana Lovrenčić, Annika Räim, Liisi Raidna and Liesbeth Decan. The team carried out significant research which uncovered an important knowledge gap in scholarly work on the artistic practices of the women artists. Understanding the need to complete this information, a new research project, “Not Yet Written Stories: Women Artists’ Archives Online” has begun, with the aim of extending the database and presenting research resources that would illuminate the heritage of these artists. The project leader, the Arton Foundation, is working in collaboration with the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) (www.lcca.lv), the Office for Photography and the SCCA–Ljubljana Center for Contemporary Arts (http://www.scca-ljubljana.si/). The project is part of the Creative Europe programme 2019–2021.
The “Not Yet Written Stories: Women Artists’ Archives Online” project team consists of Marika Kuźmicz, Sandra Križić Roban, Lana Lovrenčić, Barbara Borčić, Peter Cerovšek and Andra Silapētere. Research activities are focused on the Archive of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, the Art Academy of Latvia, the Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb, as well as the private archives of a number of women artists such as Edita Schubert, Lidija Laforest, Vera Fischer, Jadranka Fatur, Slavka Pavić, Erika Šmider, Jagoda Kaloper, and Ivančica Privora (Croatian artists); Ruta Kreica, Laima Eglīte, Mudīte Gaiševska, Dzidra Ezergaile and Rita Einberga (Latvian artists); Ana Nuša Dragan, Zemira Alajbegović and Ema Kugler (Slovenian artists); and Jadwiga Singer, Iwona Lemke-Konart, Jagoda Przybylak, Bożena and Alicja Wahl, Barbara Kozłowska, and Maria Anto (Polish artists).
The Database Guide:
The “Artists” section offers information on artists whose works are available in the database. The artists’ biographies are presented in the form of a timeline with important events and created works.
The “Artworks” section contains images of the artworks, their descriptions and metadata.
The “Relations” section features a visualization of relations between the artists and art institutions, along with their network of collaborations.