idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
idw - Informationsdienst
Wissenschaft
Since 1 January 2026, Bianca de Divitiis has been Director at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, where she heads the department “Contexts, Communities, Connections. New Narratives in History of Art.” The department focuses on global culture through the study of the history of art and architecture between the late medieval and early modern periods. It places Italy in dialogue with Europe, the Mediterranean, the Iberian Americas, and other global geographies through a transdisciplinary approach.
Over the coming years, the department will deal with two fundamental challenges: reconcile the advancement of art-historical research with the broader themes connected to urgent contemporary problems; continue and revive the established tradition of early modern and modern studies, recovering the complexity of the Renaissance and its polycentric and global nature, as well as its appeal and ability to speak to younger generations. The title of the department encapsulates the key concepts with which projects, labs and actions will face these challenges. New narratives in the history of art will face these challenges by reconstructing the socio-historical and physical contexts around works of art, architecture, and artifacts; shift the attention too often directed to authorship and to single individuals towards a plural and choral sense of art and to the agency of communities, both past and present, understanding their local challenges as well as their global ones. Furthermore, new narratives will work to re-establish the connecting threads by combining a deep on-site and philological knowledge of specific territories, with the insights from global and universal approaches, considering local and global as mutually and simultaneously intersecting dimensions.
The department is initiating with five research projects and research lines conceived with a multi-scale and horizontal approach, between micro and global history, open to contemporary themes, and scalable into the medium and long-term. A first area of investigation is devoted to the polycentric Renaissance, with particular attention to the global connections that developed within the dominions of the Iberian monarchy between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. A second research strand focuses on the Mediterranean archipelagos as interconnected insular networks and as sites of exchange, transit, and migration, analysed in their historical and cultural dimensions. A third line of inquiry centres on the relationship between research, dissemination, and audiences, reflecting on how art history can be communicated today and exploring the role of architectural heritage as a tool for orientation and care, particularly for people affected by Alzheimer’s disease. Reflection on borders—understood in their physical, cultural, and intellectual dimensions—constitutes a further axis of research, alongside an investigation into nature and antiquarianism, which interprets natural elements as “alternative antiquities” and as central resources in the lives of communities. In parallel and in connection to the projects, the department is starting four Digital Labs and a series of On-site Actions will exploit the institute’s potential of being in Florence, its own history, its new creative processes.
Bianca de Divitiis is an art and architectural historian specialising in the late medieval and early modern periods across Europe and with an interest in connections to wider geographies. For over fifteen years she has been Professor of History of Art at the University of Naples Federico II, where she has served as Deputy Director of the Department of Humanistic Studies and as Rector’s Delegate for Humanistic Research, as well as a member of several university boards. Over the past two decades, she has worked on art, architecture, and antiquarian culture between the late medieval and early modern periods, substantially renewing Renaissance studies by challenging long-standing historiographical paradigms and addressing major gaps in the field. She was Principal Investigator of the ERC project HistAntArtSI and directed the large-scale national research project The Renaissance in Southern Italy and in the Islands: Cultural Heritage and Technology. A member of the Academia Europaea since 2022, she has received grants and fellowships from IUAV University of Venice, the Francis Haskell Memorial Fund, The Warburg Institute, Villa I Tatti – The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and The Paul Mellon Centre – Yale University. Her publications include 19 articles in international peer-reviewed journals and 40 contributions to edited volumes; she is editor or co-editor of four books, including A Companion to the Renaissance in Southern Italy (Brill, 2023).
The Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut (KHI), founded in 1897, has been an institute of the Max Planck Society since 2002. A place of presence, encounters, and collaborations between scholars of high international level, the KHI sees its role in co-shaping the future of the discipline, in dialogue with other fields such as anthropology, conservation sciences, archaeology, philosophy, and history. Over the last years the projects of the KHI have focused on the histories of art, architecture and photography from a transcultural perspective in a wide chronological and geographical range. At the KHI, (art) historical research is intertwined with a critical engagement in contemporary debates and challenges, such as ecology, aesthetics, ethics, urbanization, heritage, geopolitics, migration, discourses and practices of care, visual and material culture, global art worlds, the future of museums and politics of archives, as well as codifications, languages and narratives, artificial intelligence, digital transformation, and others. What does it mean and how does it work to do art history under such conditions and concerns? This is one of the prime questions the KHI community of scholars is engaging with in their projects and collaborations. The institute is particularly committed to supporting young scholars, while its renowned Library and Photothek are open to the international community of researchers.
https://www.khi.fi.it/en/forschung/abteilung-dedivitiis/index.php
Bianca de Divitiis
Quelle: Bärbel Reinhard
Copyright: KHI–MPI / Bärbel Reinhard
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