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In the Romantic period, the archive was more than a repository of the past: it was a living site of imagination, reconstruction, and desire. Today, archives are again central to debates on memory, preservation, and the recovery of histories. In an age of information overload, media excess, and destabilising fake news, the archive has become a hotly contested field: as verifiable record (resisting distortion) and as partial repository (erasing as much as it preserves). Archives Unbound: Time and Memory in Romantic Visual Culture seizes this moment to discuss Romanticism in dialogue with European and global perspectives, asking how art historians can engage the past with rigour, ethical awareness, and creative scope.The workshop is a collaboration between the University of Jena’s research group European Romanticism or Romanticisms in Europe?, the University of York’s Department of History of Art and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut (KHI). Set against the backdrop of Florence – itself a city-as-archive – the event will examine the archive as both repository and dynamic system of knowledge, memory and power. The workshop coincides with The City as Archive, a major KHI exhibition juxtaposing historical photographs with contemporary works by Armin Linke.
Programme:
Monday, 2 February 2026
9:30 Welcome (Hannah Baader & Costanza Caraffa) and Introduction (Elisabeth Ansel & Christin Bates)
1 EXHIBITION
10:00 THE CITY AS ARCHIVE
Project & Exhibition
Hannah Baader & Costanza Caraffa
13:30 Lunch Break
SESSION I
2 Michael Smith, MA (York)
14:30 John Flaxman’s Roman Archive
3 Gemma Shearwood, MA (York)
15:15 Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral as Archives of National and Imperial Memory
16:00 Tea Break (30 min.)
SESSION II
4 Mira Claire Zadrozny, MA (Jena)
16:30 The Archival City in Distress: Time and Memory in Images of Ephemeral Ruins
5 John Norrman, MA (Jena)
17:15 The Image of the Barricade: Illustrated Periodicals as Archives of a Social Practice of Imagining Crisis, 1848
19:30 Dinner
Tuesday, 3 February 2026
9:30 Greeting
SESSION III
6 Andrin Albrecht, MA (Jena)
9:45 Ludic Romanticism, or, the Five-Color Archive of Magic: The Gathering
7 Kohta Nakajima, MA (York)
10:30 Metaphor as Fragment: Visualising Shakespeare in William Blake’s ‘Pity’ within Eighteenth-Century Reading Culture
11:15 Tea Break
SESSION IV
8 Selina Kusche (Jena)
11:45 Stories of a Single Figure? How Understanding History Paintings Requires a Mental Archive
9 Jacob Bolda, MA (York)
12:30 Archives of Intimacy: The Portrait Miniature and the Romantic Subject
13:15 Lunch Break
SESSION V
10 Dr Elisabeth Ansel (Jena)
14:15 Fragmented Archives: The Manifold Aesthetics of Memory, Time and Ecology in Ossianic Landscapes
11 Christin Bates, MA (Jena)
15:00 Memories in Stone: Ruskinian Ecologies and Images as Climate Archives
15:45 Tea Break
12 Kate Nankervis, MA (York)
16:15 ‘The air itself is one vast library’: Atmosphere as Archive in British Romanticism
17:00 Final Discussion
20:00 Dinner
Organising Institutions: University of Jena, University of York and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut
Organisers: Elisabeth Ansel, Hannah Baader, Christin Bates, Costanza Caraffa, Johannes Grave and Richard Johns
Please find here more information on the Research Group European Romanticism or Romanticisms in Europe? at the University of Jena: https://www.gw.uni-jena.de/65010/forschungsgruppe-europaeische-romantik-oder-romantiken-in-europa
Photo: The Sarcophagus of Seti I at Sir John Soane's Museum, engraved by Mason Jackson, Source: Illustrated London News, 1864
This event will take place in person at Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai.
VENUE
Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai
Via dei Servi 51
50122 Firenze, Italia
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Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut
Via Giuseppe Giusti 44
50121 Firenze, Italia
+39 055 24911-1
[email protected]
www.khi.fi.it
khi.fi.it/newsletter
instagram.com/khiflorenz
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai, Via dei Servi, 51, 50122 Firenze FI, Italia, Firenze, Italy
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