Dr. Ariella Minden

Ariella Minden is scientific assistant in the department of Prof. Dr. Tristan Weddigen. She completed her doctoral dissertation entitled “In Dialogue: Medial Thinking in Bolognese Printmaking, 1500–1530” at the University of Toronto in 2024, having been granted her B.A. from the same institution in 2015. Minden received an M.A. from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2016 with a thesis on the early-sixteenth-century literary reception of Francesco Francia. Minden's current research evaluates Bologna’s role as a centre of printmaking by using media theory as a lens through which to explore the emergence of new artistic technologies. From the study of these practices in their infancy, she developed an interest in the role of failure as a central component of artistic process. This resulted in the organization of the international conference “Failure: Understanding Art as Process, 1150–1750” with Alessandro Nova and Luca Palozzi in November 2020.

Minden has gained curatorial experience at the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies in Toronto, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and the Gallerie Estensi in Modena. Prior to joining Prof. Weddigen’s department in November 2023, she was a predoctoral fellow in Dr. Sietske Fransen’s research group Visualizing Science in Media Revolutions also at the Bibliotheca Hertziana from March 2022 and in the department of Prof. Dr. Alessandro Nova at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz-Max-Planck-Institut from 2018 to 2022.