Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz

Workshop

The Art
of AI

Narratives, Creativities,
and Ethics

18 – 19 April 2024

Campus Extension and Extraordinary Closures

Finissage

Hilde in Italia.
Arte e vita nelle fotografie
di Hilde Lotz-Bauer

5 May 2024

The Institute

The Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz is a research institute dedicated to the histories of art and architecture in a transcultural and global perspective, with a focus on Italy, Europe and the Mediterranean.

Further information

Research opportunities

The Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz awards a number of scholarships and contracts as a means of supporting the research projects of outstanding young academics.

Further information

Library and Photothek

The Library and the Photothek are open to users with a valid library card, Monday to Friday, from 9:00 am to 8:00 pm and 10:00 am to 7:00 pm respectively.

Until the May 10, 2024, individual sections of the library will not be accessible. From April 22 to probably May 10, 2024 the Photothek's collections will not be accessible. See Campus Extension and Extraordinary Closures.

Section Za (auction catalogues) of the Library is unavailable for consultation until further notice.

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Research topics

Ethics and Architecture

The spectrum of questions posed by the relation between ethics and architecture is broad. It spans all the way from the reception of Vitruvius and Aristotle in the Trecento, to reflections on the moral dimension of architecture in the eighteenth century, right down to current theories and practices of building.

Research areas

Languages of Art History

How did conventions of art historical writing come into being across various linguistic traditions, and how have they survived and developed out of inter-linguistic exchange?

Rinascimento conteso

'Rinascimento conteso' aims to construct a dialogue with challenges to the historiographical paradigm of a supposedly triumphant Renaissance, responding to sound criticisms of the term’s elitist connotations.

Vasaris Welten und die deutsche kommentierte Ausgabe der 'Vite' in den beiden Editionen von 1550 und 1568

Das Werk und Denken Giorgio Vasaris bildet für die europäische Kunstwissenschaft bis heute das wichtigste Referenzmodell und einen konstanten methodol...

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

Iconologies and Iconospheres of the Sea, ca. 1200–1650, III: Liquid Materialities

The project investigates the interdependencies of art and nature and the production of knowledge in mainly Western, pre-modern worlds, by studying the...

Transregional Art Histories. Actors, Spaces, Ecologies from the 13th Century to the Present

Research in this unit focuses on the history of art and of aesthetic practices in transregional and ecological perspectives. With a strong interest in the materiality of art and of artistic practices, it investigates works of art in relation to place, space, and environment.

Research areas

Ship Ex-Voto as Objects, Metaphors and Figures of Communality, from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century

A canvas by the French artist Ulysse Butin, presented at the Salon in Paris in 1881, sentimentally evokes a maritime votive scenario showing a young l...

Bilderfahrzeuge. Aby Warburg’s Legacy and the Future of Iconology

Der Forschungsverbund hat zum Ziel, die Migration von Bildern, Artefakten und Ideen aus einer interdisziplinären Perspektive zu erforschen. Dabei geht es besonders um Beziehungen zwischen Kulturen, die sich in Zeit und Ort, Sprache, Religion und politischer Ordnung unterscheiden, und um die theoretischen Implikationen von solchen Migrations-, Transformations- und Interaktionsprozessen.

Il Progetto EUPLOOS

Il Progetto Euploos intende promuovere un dialogo internazionale tra la comunità dei ricercatori e degli studiosi offrendo uno strumento di ricerca in...

CENOBIUM – A Project for the Multimedia Representation of Romanesque Cloister Capitals in the Mediterranean Region

The aim of the CENOBIUM project is to facilitate, by means of high-resolution digital photography, video, 3D scanning and an interactive web interface, the analysis of the complex dynamics of artistic exchange in the 12th and 13th century.

Photography as Instrument and Medium of Art History

Historic photographic collections created with the purpose of art-historical documentation are also documents of the methods and the history of the discipline.

Photo Archives

'Photo Archives' is an open series of international scholarly activities dedicated to the interaction between photographic archives, photography and academic disciplines.

Ethico-Aesthetics of the Visual

The far-reaching relations between art, visuality and ethics require fundamental examination. Art history, and more generally the history of images, h...

The City as Archive. Histories of Collecting and Archiving in and the Musealisation of Florence, Eighteenth Century to the Present

In November 1916 a spectacular auction took place in the city of New York, when the art dealer, collector and trained artist Elia Volpi (1858–1938) so...

Action ǀ Retraction: Czechoslovak Art and Philosophy in the International Context, 1945–1989

The tendency observed in recent years to question the Western history of (post-)modernism, and to increasingly take into account, among other things, ...

The Edification of the Soul: Leon Battista Alberti’s Dialogue Della tranquillità dell’animo

This interdisciplinary project was dedicated to the first German translation of and commentary on Leon Battista Alberti’s dialogue Profugiorum ab aeru...

Research areas

Change of Perspective: Art and Philosophy after Wittgenstein

In many of his writings the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein draws parallels between his philosophical thinking and artistic modes of thought ...

Between Ethos and Excess? A Critique of the Sublime

The sublime is a hybrid concept and not easy to define. However, in current debates within the humanities, the sublime is increasingly described as a ...

4A Laboratory: Art Histories, Archaeologies, Anthropologies, Aesthetics (2019–2023)

A cooperation of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz together with Humboldt University of Berlin and Forum Transregional Studien Berlin

4A Laboratory: Art Histories, Archaeologies, Anthropologies, Aesthetics

4A_Lab strives to create a dialogue between the disciplines of Art History, Archaeology, Anthropology/Ethnology, and Aesthetic Practices (4A), as well as other disciplines concerned with objects, practices, ecologies, and narratives (OPEN).

Digital Humanities Lab

The Digital Humanities Laboratory (DH Lab) is an interdisciplinary research center within the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz that focuses on in...

GAP – Graffiti Art in Prison

GAP – Graffiti Art in Prison connects Palazzo Chiaramonte (Steri) in Palermo with artistic expression in prisons today. This interdisciplinary project, funded by the EU Program Erasmus+, incorporates scientific research, didactic and artistic programs, and social engagement.

Materiality and (In-)Visibility: Women in Socialist and Post-Socialist Public Spaces

This trans-disciplinary project explores the multiple presences of women within socialist and post-socialist public spaces, focusing on their represen...

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 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.

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.

Research areas

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.

The Space of Childhood: The Adler Collection between Architecture, Art, History, Pedagogy and Creativity

This project studies a recent donation to the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense in Milan: the unpublished correspondence of the architects Hedwig Feldmann and Hans Edward Adler, dating back to their stay in the USSR from 1930 to 1933, as well as their collection of 257 Soviet children’s books, most of which were published between the 1920s and 1933.

Practices of Imagination

Against the backdrop of contemporary debates over the creative potential and embodiment of cognitive processes, imagination, a concept that according ...

Phenomenon ‘Colour’: Aesthetics – Epistemology – Politics

Colour and its perception is dependent on a variety of subjective predispositions and external physical conditions, and is decisively determined by so...

Photo-Objects, Cultural Displays, and Rhetorics of Value

Systems of value impact the lives of photographs as well as the work practices in art-historical photo archives.

Objects of Migration, Photo-Objects of Art History: Encounters in an Archive

Objects of Migration, Photo-Objects of Art History: Encounters in an Archive is a joint project by the Photothek and the artist Massimo Ricciardo. It links questions of the archive with burning issues of global migration, rhetorics of value and cultural heritage.

'La duplice polarità estetica e storica' - Method, Aesthetics and Function of Photographs in the Work of Restorer Barbara Schleicher

From 1960 to 2014 the internationally renowned restorer Barbara Schleicher (*1937) worked for the Soprintendenza, churches, and museums all over Tuscany.

Studies on the Photography, Laboratory, and Archival Practice of Anton Hautmann around 1860

Anton Hautmann, who was born in Munich in 1821, settled in Florence as a sculptor in 1849, where he was also active as a photographer from 1858 until his death in 1862. As one of the pioneers of stereoscopic photography, he is best known for his views of Florentine architecture and the cityscape.

On Alinari: Archive in Transition

Artist Armin Linke participates in a dialogue between theory and practice that examines and questions the process of institutionalizing photographic archives.

The Photographers’ Sales Catalogue Collection of the Photothek

Photographers’ Sales Catalogues are essential sources for the study of professional photographers, photographic ateliers as well as the photographs themselves since they contain important information concerning techniques, circulation, dating and attribution.

Research areas

The King’s Finger, the Mermaid’s Body and the Power of the Sea

This project explores aspects of the transformative power of art by looking at a pair of medieval gloves. Among its particularly rare and precio...

Cultural Possessions

The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is a complex legal structure that serves as the subject of this art historical and artistic investigat...

Empires, Environments, Objects

Max-Planck Partner Group 2022-2027
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima – Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz

Sounds of Melancholy

Die „Farben“ der Melancholie standen im elisabethanischen Zeitalter hoch im Kurs bei Philosophen und Dichtern, in der Kunst und in der Musik: 88 versc...

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.

Coded Objects

"Coded Objects" as method of refraction questions any assumptions of "neutral" technology or immaterial bureaucracy. Instead, the Lise Meitner Group examines how processes form values through objects—and how objects inform processes in societies.

Fragile Objects, Coded Knowledge (The Architectural Archive)

In architecture, the construction of disciplinary knowledge has been bound to the making of objects and their processes—be it plans, models, sketches or renderings—and their subsequent preservation: what the archive holds informs the histories that are written. In order to question its seemingly stable categories and include marginalized makers, the Lise Meitner Group’s project embraces fragile objects as a way to understand how disciplinary knowledge has been coded.

Library and Photothek

Research topics

Ethics and Architecture

Languages of Art History

Rinascimento conteso

Vasaris Welten und die deutsche kommentierte Ausgabe der 'Vite' in den beiden Editionen von 1550 und 1568

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

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

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

The Art of Containment

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

Iconologies and Iconospheres of the Sea, ca. 1200–1650, III: Liquid Materialities

Transregional Art Histories. Actors, Spaces, Ecologies from the 13th Century to the Present

Ship Ex-Voto as Objects, Metaphors and Figures of Communality, from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century

Bilderfahrzeuge. Aby Warburg’s Legacy and the Future of Iconology

Il Progetto EUPLOOS

CENOBIUM – A Project for the Multimedia Representation of Romanesque Cloister Capitals in the Mediterranean Region

Photography as Instrument and Medium of Art History

Photo Archives

Ethico-Aesthetics of the Visual

The City as Archive. Histories of Collecting and Archiving in and the Musealisation of Florence, Eighteenth Century to the Present

Action ǀ Retraction: Czechoslovak Art and Philosophy in the International Context, 1945–1989

The Edification of the Soul: Leon Battista Alberti’s Dialogue Della tranquillità dell’animo

Change of Perspective: Art and Philosophy after Wittgenstein

Between Ethos and Excess? A Critique of the Sublime

4A Laboratory: Art Histories, Archaeologies, Anthropologies, Aesthetics (2019–2023)

4A Laboratory: Art Histories, Archaeologies, Anthropologies, Aesthetics

Digital Humanities Lab

GAP – Graffiti Art in Prison

Materiality and (In-)Visibility: Women in Socialist and Post-Socialist Public Spaces

The Aesthetics of Marble

The Ligurian Complex. Case Studies in Ecology and Aesthetics

A Heritage Observatory of Socialist Worlds

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

The Space of Childhood: The Adler Collection between Architecture, Art, History, Pedagogy and Creativity

Practices of Imagination

Phenomenon ‘Colour’: Aesthetics – Epistemology – Politics

Photo-Objects, Cultural Displays, and Rhetorics of Value

Objects of Migration, Photo-Objects of Art History: Encounters in an Archive

'La duplice polarità estetica e storica' - Method, Aesthetics and Function of Photographs in the Work of Restorer Barbara Schleicher

Studies on the Photography, Laboratory, and Archival Practice of Anton Hautmann around 1860

On Alinari: Archive in Transition

The Photographers’ Sales Catalogue Collection of the Photothek

The King’s Finger, the Mermaid’s Body and the Power of the Sea

Cultural Possessions

Empires, Environments, Objects

Sounds of Melancholy

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

Coded Objects

Fragile Objects, Coded Knowledge (The Architectural Archive)

Workshop

The Art of AI: Narratives, Creativities, and Ethics

Matinée

Sarah Guérin: Ivory Trade in the Age of Henry the Navigator: Shifting Worlds

Work in Progress

Jaś Elsner: Amarāvatī: Cosmography of an Ancient Stūpa

Hilde in Italia. Arte e vita nelle fotografie di Hilde Lotz-Bauer

Palazzo Buontalenti. A photographic campaign

"Most sincerely recommended to the Kunsthistorisches Institute for reading" Aby Warburg's donations from the foundation of the Institute until his death (1897-1929)

Works by Alexander Kluge with Katharina Grosse and by Armin Linke in occasion of the exhibition "Aby Warburg, il Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz e il laboratorio delle immagini"

Aby Warburg, il Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz e il laboratorio delle immagini

Rooms with a View. Aby Warburg, Florence and the Laboratory of Images

The Hautmann Collection

Das Universum in Bildern – Wissen und Vorstellung in Geschichte und Gegenwart

Rhythm and Colour Foregrounding Music in Indian Album Paintings (16th-18th Centuries)

Nicolò Degiorgis 102 metri

Inspiration and Arrangement. The library – a place of research for 125 years

"Mudejarismo" and "Moorish Revival"

IMAGE CAPITAL by Estelle Blaschke and Armin Linke: exhibition at Fondazione MAST

Figurations of Space. Alberti Prints in the Rare Books Section of the Library

Archival Practices in the Photothek

In Noble Garb – Historical Paper Bindings in the Library

ART HISTORY WITH A CAMERA. The photography of Ralph Lieberman

Joseph Beuys collection

Retouching – Image manipulation in photography

THE MÉTIERS OF THE PHOTOGRAPHER Roberto Sigismondi

Covid-19 Gallery

"Trésors d'art à la portée de tous" – Photographers' catalogues

Neo Rauch – Works from 2008 to 2019

Natalia Goncharova. A Woman of the Avant-garde with Gauguin, Matisse and Picasso

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

Photography and Catastrophe
Antonio Di Cecco in dialogue with the collections of the Photo Library

Ramboux
Between Art and Art History

Exchanging Gazes
Between China and Europe 1669–1907

Into the Archive
On the Materiality of Photographs

Francesco Clemente
Fiori d’inverno a New York

Romualdo Moscioni
Apulia Monumentale

Mschatta im Fokus
Das jordanische Wüstenschloss in historischen Fotografien

The Florentine Renaissance
The City as the Crucible of Culture

Translatio Nummorum
Die zwölf ersten römischen Caesaren in der Renaissance

Il Dolce Potere delle Corde
Orfeo, Apollo, Arione e Davide nella grafica tra Quattro e Cinquecento

Francesco Clemente
I Tarocchi

Research horizons and new technologies
The Euploos project for the Collection of the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi

The Vasari Century
Florentine Draughtsmen of the Cinquecento

El Vuelo de las Imágenes
Arte plumario en México y Europa

The Future of Tradition - The Tradition of Future
100 Years after the Exhibition 'Masterpices of Muhammedan Art' in Munich

ZANG TUMB TUUM…
100 works of Futurism

Contrappunti II
Arte contemporanea alla Casa Zuccari Pfadfinder - Sentieri Susanne Weirich

Casa Zuccari
An artist's house in Florence