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) sold a collection of Italian and Florentine art, in total more than 1200 works. Not even a decade earlier, Volpi had started to display this collection at the Palazzo Davanzati in Florence, a historical fourteenth-century palace. Volpi had bought the palace in 1904 and, following a restoration, opened it to the public in 1910.

Volpi's museum at Palazzo Davanzati is a single, yet significant case among a series of new museums, collections, and archives established in Florence, between the eighteenth and the twenty-first century. Many of these built upon earlier collections or collecting practices. Almost all of them were re-systematized or reshaped in the decades and centuries to follow and continue to be re-thought or remodeled to this day. 

The desire to create public access to archives and study collections for both scholars and the larger public was not limited to works of art; it extended to history, literature and especially to the natural sciences. Florentine archiving practices included the systematic collection of scientific instruments, as well as the recording of geological formations, a singular collection of plant specimens, mammals, birds, skeletons and the like. It included also geographical, astronomical and a wide range of textual records. Together, these form a rare and surprising accumulation or archive of epistemic things and of knowledge distributed in and provided by the city at its various institutional levels.

The KHI Summer School invites applications from the fields of art history and related disciplines, from graduate students, doctoral candidates, and scholars who are embarking on post-doctoral research. The number of participants is restricted to fifteen. Each participant is expected to contribute to the success of the course not only with a presentation but also by actively engaging in the discussions. The Institute will bear the cost of accommodation and will reimburse half of the incurred traveling expenses; in addition, participants will receive a daily allowance.

Applications in English, Italian or German should include a letter of interest comprising a research statement, a one-page curriculum vitae and a presentation proposal (ca. 300 words).

Send your documents by 25 June 2018 in a single PDF file (max. 2 MB) to the attention of Dr. Hannah Baader and Dr. Costanza Caraffa: studienkurs2018@khi.fi.it

For more information click "LINK TO ORIGINAL"  below.

This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:

http://www.khi.fi.it/5876929/20180625-the-city-as-archive