Events

Long after leaving the artist’s studio, drawings continue to transform. More fragile and responsive than canvas or panel, paper not only registers the passage of time but also readily reflects shifts in ownership, taste, and interest. This exhibition presents a selection of case studies from the Hertziana collection that draws attention to the open temporality of these works. [more]

Photograph albums of Victorian Britain have often been interpreted in terms of the social and familial networks of their compilers, but they also imply certain geographies – local and transnational, imagined and travelled – that are not always brought to the same level of critical attention. This lecture examines an impressive album compiled by Cecilia Mary Jocelyn, née Elliot, which is currently on permanent display at the National Portrait Gallery in London. [more]

The Portuguese, like many Europeans at this time, brought with them to Hizen province (modern Saga and Nagasaki prefectures), in northwestern Kyushu, a certain ceramic theory of classification and taste that did not allow them to understand Japanese preferences on the local terms. Nor did these nanbanjin (Southern barbarians) comprehend the preference for a seemingly random assemblage of a wide variety of local and imported ceramic works. [more]

Join us for a panel session on preventive destruction as a military strategy and its consequences on the architectural, artistic, and religious landscape of Early Modern Italian cities. [more]

The East German state, the German Democratic Republic, fashioned itself as a “Leseland” or a “land of reading.” A diversified field of publishing houses and an immense book production, sometimes with remarkably high print runs, may justify such an image. Yet, many of these publications did not address the eyes of the reader but the beholder—in the form of photographically illustrated books. Unsurprisingly, Berlin, the capital of the East German state, was among the most prominent subjects. [more]

Il 25 agosto 1925 il filosofo Walter Benjamin e la drammaturga Asja Lācis pubblicano sulla Frankfurter Zeitung un saggio su Napoli destinato non soltanto a cambiare la percezione dell’immagine della città, ma a definire una nuova categoria di pensiero. [more]

Histories of modern architecture ignore the degree to which as a fashion it was marketed to women, often by other women. Considering the role of House Beautiful in its reception in the U.S. begins to redress interpretations that also marginalize men, such as Erich Mendelsohn, who designed commercially successful businesses frequented by women. [more]

Premodern sacred space was never in stasis. It was moving and active; in flux by definition, it poses many difficulties for historical narrative, conservation, and restoration practices. This two day international conference highlights some of the most recent methodological questions and approaches to modeling unstable materials and activities. [more]