Image, Object, Site.
Mediterranean / Transcultural Art Histories

Department Gerhard Wolf

The projects of the department investigate the 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 the digital world), and they involve specific temporalities and interrelated spatial dimensions: they are historical phenomena. Objects and images in turn are viewed in their materiality, mediality and mobility, inviting a critical cross reading of recent debates on images and things. Under these premises, the projects of the department (with a pre-modern focus) map and analyze constellations and the interactions of images, objects and sites; interfaces between cultural heritage and environment, between ecology and aesthetics. Major fields of inquiry are transcultural dynamics of various scales in relation to time and space; the transformative aspects of the migration of objects and mobile memories; locative practices and the multiple nature of sites (social, religious, political, artistic); catastrophes (such as earthquakes and wars) and the responsibilities of art history in the face of these.

Projects
Team

Projects

The Art of Containment

The Art of Containment is a recently started long-term collaborative research and exhibition project. It is 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 (I): L'Italia sismica (sta-sis)

Il progetto elabora nuove forme d'impegno della storia dell'arte nel mondo contemporaneo, soprattutto di fronte ai disastrosi eventi sismici che hanno colpito L'Aquila (2009), il territorio emiliano (2012) e il centro Italia (2016), e più in generale considerando le sfide catastrofiche al patrimonio monumentale e artistico.

Pompeii Arch&Lab

Eine natur- und geisteswissenschaftliche Untersuchung der Restaurierungs- und Musealisierungsgeschichte Pompejis verbunden mit dem Ziel der Entwicklung innovativer, nachhaltiger Restaurierungsmaterialien und Verfahren.

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.

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.