Anu Allas is a Visiting Researcher and the head of the MA programme at the Institute of Art History and Visual Culture (KVI).
Her main research topics are art in socialist Eastern Europe after the World War II and neo-avant-garde and performative artistic practices of the 1960s–1970s. She studied art history at the Estonian Academy of Arts and defended her PhD dissertation on experimental practices in Estonian art and theatre of the 1960s at the Free University of Berlin (2013). She has published the book “Spiel der Unsicherheit / Unsicherheit des Spiels: Experimentelle Praktiken in der estnischen Kunst und im estnischen Theater der 1960er Jahre” (transcript 2015), articles on socialist-era art and contemporary art and edited issues of academic journals, books and exhibition catalogues. In 2014–2020 she was a curator and programme manager in Kumu Art Museum, mainly curating exhibitions of art from the 2nd half of the 20th century, including the permanent display “Conflicts and Adaptations: Estonian Art of the Soviet Era (1940–1991)” (opened in 2016). In 2020–2025 she was the Vice Rector of Research at the Estonian Academy of Arts.
Anu Allas has mainly taught courses on 20th-century art history, including Estonian art of the Soviet period, and the introductory course “Museum in Theory and Practice”. She currently teaches “History of Modern Art II” (together with Anders Härm), MA seminar (together with Epp Lankots) and MA project (together with Kristina Jõekalda).