Milena Bartlová is an art historian. Despite the political barriers of the Communist era, she managed to study art history externally at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, and worked from 1978 to 1996 at the National Gallery in Prague, first as an administrative assistant and eventually as curator. She received her doctorate (CSc) in 1995 from the Institute for Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences. In 1997, she started her career as a university instructor, successively (or simultaneously) lecturing at the Department of History and Historical Instruction at the Faculty of Pedagogy, Charles University, at the Faculty of Humanistic Sciences, and in the Art History Seminar at Masaryk University in Brno, where she received an associate professorship in 2001 and full professorship in 2005. After a study fellowship at the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin (2008) and a term as visiting professor at the Institut für Bild- und Kunstgeschichte of Humboldt University (2009-2010), she returned to Prague and since 2011 has taught at UMPRUM, lecturing on art-historical methodology and art history from prehistoric times to the Late Baroque, as well as managing graduate studies. After three decades of specialisation in medieval art, she has recently turned more towards art-historical theory, specifically related to national identities, and the historiography of art history. She has published eight books (one of them in Germany), edited several volumes, prepared a series of scholarly conferences, and served as the principal investigator of eight grant projects; her publications in scholarly journals, edited volumes, and catalogues number in the hundreds. From 2009 to 2011, she was chair of the Art History Society of the Czech Lands. Additionally, she has consistently published writings of criticism, cultural-political journalism, and popularization, as well as serving on several editorial and scientific boards.
