Eline Vandenbosch is a Belgian design and art historian and archaeologist of 24 years old. She started her higher education with a MA in art history and archaeology with a minor in history that she followed at the Free University of Brussels (Vrije Universiteit van Brussel), from which she graduated in 2020. In this program, she became interested in the art nouveau style. Brussels has a large concentration of houses in this style designed by important architects such as Paul Hankar (1859-1901), Victor Horta (1861-1947) and Henry van de Velde (1863-1957). Her dissertations for this program were devoted to stained glass windows in townhouses in Brussels that were designed by the architect Victor Horta (1861-1947), between 1890 and 1911. This research sought to gather information on the use, iconography, function and materials of these objects.
In her BA she had the opportunity to do an exchange with the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 2018. This is where she learned a lot about the construction of identity. By following the course art and food which was a collaboration between the University of Leiden and the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague (KABK), she learned about the role of language, food and culture in general in the formation of personal and national identity.
In 2019, she carried out my internship at CIVA. This institution is a museum, archive and library on urban planning, architecture and landscape in Brussels and she worked here on the reorganisation and digitisation of the archive of the designer Marcel-Louis Baugniet (1896-1995).
One of the reasons why she followed this MA was because she wanted to learn more about the fin de Siecle period (end of the nineteenth century) which caused the creation of the art nouveau style (end of the nineteenth century until the start of the First World War). During this MA she researched the innovation of electric light and a plaquette that was created by René Lalique and that depicts Sarah Bernhardt. On the other hand, she also used this Ma as an opportunity to gain professional experience and worked on different projects. She learned that she is interested in sharing knowledge about design and art history with a wider audience and that she would like to work in the future in a depot or archive.
