Sandra Neugärtner is an art historian whose research develops a new methodological framework for art history by reconceptualizing artistic production as a form of organized work. Moving beyond object-centered and socio-cultural approaches, she analyzes the artwork as the outcome of complex production systems shaped by logistics, administrative rationality, and technological transformation. Central to her approach is the concept of logistical inversion, which shifts the analytical focus from the finished object to the infrastructures, decision-making processes, and temporal regimes that constitute it. By integrating praxeology, systems theory, and economic perspectives, her work establishes a new paradigm for understanding modern art as embedded in the operational and epistemic structures of production.
This framework is at the core of her habilitation (venia legendi in art history, with a focus on modern and contemporary art, February 2026, Leuphana University Lüneburg), funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The project offers a systematic account of the reorganization of artistic production in modernity by analyzing how artistic practices are shaped by changing constellations of labor and knowledge across different political systems. Focusing on the work of Léna Meyer-Bergner, it reconstructs production processes in contexts ranging from the Weimar Republic and Stalinism to exile in Mexico and Cold War cultural policy. The resulting monograph is forthcoming in 2026.
Complementing this focus on production systems is her extensive research into media and image practices. Her monograph Statt Farbe: Licht: Das Fotogramm bei Moholy-Nagy als pädagogisches Medium (2021) reinterprets the photogram as a material and epistemic practice of perception. By situating it within a media-historical trajectory that extends to contemporary, algorithmically mediated image production, she connects the history of the avant-garde to the logic of automated and AI-based visual knowledge.
A further pillar of her work is the analysis of institutional structures. Her edited volume Institutional Criticism in Art Education from 1900 to Today (2026) offers the first comprehensive study of this field within art academies, tracing its development from radical critique to institutional integration.
Sandra Neugärtner studied design, economics, art history, and cultural studies in Dessau, Berlin, Munich, and Zurich. She held postdoctoral research positions at Leuphana University Lüneburg (2022–2025) and the University of Erfurt (2021–2022). Her research has been conducted through international fellowships at Harvard University’s Department of History of Art and Architecture (2017–2018) and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut (2024–2025).
Dr. habil. Sandra Neugärtner 