Image, Object, Site.
Mediterranean / Transcultural Art Histories

Department Gerhard Wolf

The department’s current projects investigate ways in which objects and images partake in the formation and transformation of environments, and vice versa. The environments studied are shaped partly or fully by humans and technology (including museums and digital worlds), involving specific temporalities and interrelated spatial dimensions. Objects and images, in turn, are viewed in their materiality, mediality and mobility.

The major fields of inquiry are migratory and transcultural dynamics of various scales and in various geopolitical power relations (for example colonial contexts); locative practices, encompassing the connectivity and multiplicity of (social, religious, artistic, and political) sites, as well as catastrophes (such as earthquakes, ecological disasters and wars). The interrelations between heritage and environment have become a major concern of the projects of the department, considered through case studies of broad historical and geographical range. A substantial number of these projects is grouped under the title Art History, Heritage, Environment and contributes to the overarching agenda of questioning the potentials and responsibilities of art history in dialogue with other disciplines and in a critical engagement with digital humanities.

Projects
Team

Projects

The Aesthetics of Marble

The project combines geo-aesthetics with an exploration of the metaphorical and transmaterial dimension of marble. The historical focus spans from Late Antiquity to the twenty-first century, looking at certain “marble moments”, mostly in the history of architecture, such as Roman and Byzantine wall decoration, early Omayyad art, Venetian medieval marble cladding, Roman baroque chapels, and the early twentieth century rethinking of wall decoration.

The Art of Containment

The Art of Containment is a long-term collaborative research project concerned with all kinds of vessels and containers, their materiality, shape and decoration, their functions and agency, their biographies and itineraries. The project is the next step in the research focus on concepts and theories, relations and constellations of image and object (Ding/Bild).

Storia dell'arte e catastrofi: L'italia sismica (sta-sis)

Un progetto transdisciplinare incentrato sul ruolo della storia dell’arte negli scenari post-catastrofe, con un’attenzione particolare al paesaggio e al patrimonio culturale italiani.

Ecology and Aesthetics. Environmental Approaches in Art History (e/ae)

Ecological and aesthetic theories are intertwined in multiple ways. The project opens a dialogue with archeology, anthropology and history of science concerned with the "anthropocene", rethinking the nature/culture divide in a transcultural perspective, including notions of heritage and sustainability, creation and consumption.

The Ligurian Complex. Case Studies in Ecology and Aesthetics

The project examines the complex overlaying and interpenetration of horizontal, vertical, or entangled spaces in Liguria, which are a challenge for an art historical investigation of both the production of landscape, terraforming, the interaction of human and non-human factors, and their aesthetics.

Sacred Landscapes:
Between Materiality, Transportability and Narration (Jerusalem Project)

Sacred Landscapes, in particular deserts and mountains are liminal spaces and also places of aesthetic production or response. Their dimensions are material, narrative and iconic, and they are connected to monumental sacred sites. The long-term Jerusalem project is concerned with all these aspects and analyses the ways in which they are intertwined.

Aesthetics, Art, and Architecture in the Caucasus (Georgia Project)

While most debates regarding intercultural dynamics between Christianity, Islam and Judaism are concerned with the Mediterranean, this project is concentrating on the art and architecture of South Caucasus, an under these premises hardly studied region comprising Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan as well as Georgian and Armenian heritage in Eastern Turkey.

OSCOP – Observing South Caucasus’ Historical Landscape: An Open Photo Archive

The OSCOP project aims to critically recover the collection of photographs on the cultural heritage of the South Caucasus taken in the Soviet period by scholars working at the Centro Studi e Documentazione della Cultura Armena, founded in Milan by Adriano Alpago Novello in 1976.

A Heritage Observatory of Socialist Worlds

This project focuses on the artistic, visual, and material culture of the former Soviet Union and Socialist worlds. Reflecting on the profoundly different realities of the States that were part of the Soviet sphere, as well as on the historiography and narratives, including ideological ones, that have affected issues of museography, restoration, protection and valorization, the project contributes to the understanding of architecture, art and heritage in the twentieth century.

Heritage, Art History, Tourism (H.A.T.)

H.A.T. was launched in 2019 as a platform for transdisciplinary conversations and research on the entanglement between heritage, art history, and tourism in a global horizon. The project is concerned with landscapes and territory, and with historical and contemporary dynamics of archaeology, architecture, site management and exploitation.