Twenty years ago, the IMS Study Group “Musical Iconography” was founded at the landmark congress Musical Iconography in the XXI Century: Mapping European Art for Context and Meaning (Ravenna, 2006). The meeting brought together scholars from a wide range of disciplines and academic traditions, united by a shared interest in musical iconography—explored in diverse fields of research such as musical archaeology, Renaissance iconology, oral traditions, twentieth-century synaesthetics, text-image studies, performing arts iconography, and many more. To celebrate its twentieth anniversary, the Study Group invites colleagues to Vienna for a three-day international conference.

Like the 2006 gathering, this meeting will map the current state of our field. Alongside European perspectives, we explicitly encourage global viewpoints. Equally welcome is a critical dialogue with Digital Humanities (DH) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Revisiting the visionary—if now dated—multi-volume book project initiated by Heinrich Besseler and Max Schneider, later on edited by Werner Bachmann, we ask:

• What might a “Musikgeschichte in Bildern2.0” (or even “3.0”) look like today?
• How did earlier generations of scholars interpret images of music, and how do we “read” them now, employing the diverse methodologies of musical iconography?
• Can AI offer new heuristics, or does it risk flattening hermeneutic depth?
• How do large datasets, authority files, and machine-learning techniques transform the way we view, interpret, and contextualise images of music?

The programme committee calls for proposals for

• papers (20 minutes with 10 minutes discussion) or
• lightning talks presenting project showcases (7 minutes)

Unpublished research on any period or region is welcome, especially contributions that address (but are not limited to) the following themes:

• Reassessing the legacy of “Musikgeschichte in Bildern” and other “canonical” projects
• Redefining the manifold relationships among music, text(s), and image(s) across genres
• Exploring the intersections between musical iconography and DH applications, including virtual tours, 3D models, and “sonic” reconstructions of pictorial programmes and performance contexts
• Visualising soundscapes—from archaeological evidence to contemporary urban settings
• Evaluating the potential of data-driven and/or AI-assisted approaches in musical iconography

Please submit your abstract (in English, max. 300 words, up to 8 keywords) plus a short bio (max. 150 words) to bjoern.tammen(at)oeaw.ac.at. Deadline for submissions: 10 July 2026. Notification of acceptance: 10 September 2026.

The conference will be held as an in-person event at the ÖAW Campus, 1010 Vienna, Bäckerstraße 13, Seminarraum 1 + 2. There is no conference fee. A peer-reviewed edited volume (open access) is planned.