Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz

This beautiful book presents the first systematic study of Mexican feather mosaics in the context of a broader creative exchange between Mesoamerican and European aesthetics and materials. Thirty-three scholars look at these unprecedented feather artworks that circulated all around the world in the 16th and 17th centuries from a range of vantage points, including art history, anthropology, collecting, natural history, archeology, and conservation. Published to complement a major international exhibition held at the National Museum of Art (MUNAL) in Mexico City in 2011, the book is organized thematically and includes over three hundred colour photographs illustrating feather mosaics with astonishing details, as well as relevant paintings, sculptures, drawings, engravings, books, European illuminated manuscripts, Mesoamerican codices, and studies of natural history. No book has ever brought together so many images of artworks from this tradition, let alone assembled a team of scholars to offer such trenchant analysis. It will be essential for art historians, scholars of colonialism, and historians of the Spanish Empire alike.

This book demonstrates the influence of an Edwardian 'controversy' on Russell's philosophy of the external world. It brings to our attention a debate that raged amongst Edwardian philosophers on issues of central significance to analytic philosophy before Bertrand Russell entered the discussion. In explaining this Edwardian 'controversy', Nasim Omar combines meticulous scholarly detail with accessibility to argue that the formation of the original strands of 'realism' in British philosophy, usually credited to Russell and Moore, can in fact be linked with a group of Edwardian philosophers that included G.F.Stout and Sir T.P. Nunn. The author re-examines the history of well known notions like 'sense-data' and 'sensibilia', and makes a case for understanding Russell's appeal for the application of 'logical constructions', at first only used as a device in mathematical logic, to the problem of the external world. This switch in the application of logical construction is seen as the rise of a new philosophical method. This book will not only shed light on the relevant doctrines of some of the Edwardian philosophers, but will also demonstrate the considerable role they played in the history of early analytic philosophy.

Abstract Size exclusion chromatography (SEC) of commercially available polystyrene standards with narrow distribution of molar mass and weight average molar mass (Mw ) up to 17,000 kg/mol was carried out in order to determine the influence of the concentration, injected volume of sample solutions, average size of the gel particles of the stationary phase within the columns, flow rate, as well as the system filters on the detected molar mass and its distribution. Low-angle laser light-scattering (LALLS) was used online to measure Mw and detect the drop in molar mass in the case of molecular degradation due to mechanical forces acting in the SEC system. For samples with Mw < 5,000 kg/mol, no molecular degradation could be observed at “standard conditions” (flow rate = 0.5 mL/min, concentration = 0.25 g/L, columns with 10 and 20 μurn diameter gel particles and exclusion limits varying from 10,000 to 100,000 kg/mol for polystyrene (PS), injection volumes from 100 to 300 μL). Analysing ultra-high molar mass polystyrene with Mw > 5,000 kg/mol under these conditions, molecular degradation occurred. By systematic variation of the experimental conditions, the extent of molecular degradation could be minimized. These conditions were flow rate ≤ 0.2mL/min, diameter of the gel particles of 20 μm, injected volume of about 100 μL and concentration of injected sample solution of ≤ 0.1 g/L.

The exhibition Meisterwerke muhammedanischer Kunst that took place in Munich in 1910 marked turning point in the approach to Islamic Art. The show attempted to break free of Orientalism and exotic fantasies and, in doing so, set new standard for the reception of Islamic art in Europe. Moreover, naming the Islamic artefacts masterpieces, it layed claim to bestow upon Islamic art a place equal to that of other cultural periods. This book is the first comprehensive study on this path-breaking exhibition. It includes wealth of unpublished material and numerous novel ideas on the subject and addresses the exhibition's historical context, organization, realization and display as well as its reception in the West and its later influence on the study of Islamic art.

The essays in the present volume attempt to historically reconstruct the various dependencies of philosophical and scientific knowledge of the material and technical culture of the early modern era and to draw systematic conclusions for the writing of early modern history of science. The divisive transformation of humanist scholarly culture, the Scholastic school philosophy, as well as magic in the form of a philosophy of practice is always associated with the work of Francis Bacon. All of these essays in this volume reflect the close interaction between technical models and knowledge production in natural philosophy, natural history and epistemology. It becomes clear that the technological developments of the early modern era cannot be adequately depicted in the form of a pure history of technology but rather only as part of a broader, cultural history of the sciences. Contributors include: Todd Andrew Borlik, Arianna Borrelli, Thomas Brandstetter, Daniel Damler, Luisa Dolza, Moritz Epple, Berthold Heinecke, Dana Jalobeanu, Jürgen Klein, Staffan Müller-Wille, Romano Nanni, Jarmo Pulkkinen, Pablo Schneider, Andrés Vaccari, Benjamin Wardhaugh, Sophie Weeks, and Claus Zittel.

This paper presents a recently finished project entitled ‘Iconophilia’, which engaged with the echoes that the Byzantine debate on sacred images had in Rome and in central-southern Italy. This project was funded by the European Commission at the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman, and Modern Greek Studies, and based at the University of Birmingham (2015-2017). Maintaining a firm Chalcedonian Christology, which acknowledged the perfect dual nature of Christ, the popes supported sacred images because they visualised the Incarnate God and were useful in liturgy, instruction, and private prayer. The unremitting iconophile position of the papacy defined Christian religious mentality and art for centuries. In this article, I trace the methodology followed in this project, to unveil cross-disciplinary, overlooked or unexplored aspects of the papal and monastic response to Byzantine Iconoclasm, as a contribution to a cultural history of that period.

Le terme d’« ornement » a été un vrai topos – et l’est encore aujourd’hui – lorsqu’il s’agit de définir et de décrire un art soi-disant « islamique ». Il importe d’éclairer cette position de manière critique : dans les études pré-scientifiques sur l’ornement menées par des théoriciens de l’art du xixe siècle tels qu’Owen Jones, on constate le point de départ pour une approche essentialiste et taxinomique de l’ornement, laquelle, par l’intermédiaire de la méthode de l’histoire des styles d’Alois Riegl, a également marqué profondément l’histoire de l’art du xxe siècle. Des spécialistes de l’art islamique, comme Ernst Kühnel et Titus Burckhardt, ont poursuivi dans cette voie qui appréhendait l’ornement principalement sous l’angle formel, ou bien comme une constante universelle. Seule depuis les dernières décennies, une nouvelle approche s’est frayée le chemin. C’est avant tout Oleg Grabar qui a considéré l’ornement comme porteur d’expressions et de messages, en partant des idées issues de la psychologie de la perception et de l’histoire de la réception, introduites dans l’histoire de l’art notamment par Arnheim et Gombrich. Des travaux plus récents, comme ceux de Gülru Neçipoğlu et de Valérie Gonzalez, ont souligné et élargi cette position en mettant en avant une perspective intellectualisée de l’ornement et de la géométrie.Le présent article partage ses principales positions avec ces nouvelles approches de l’ornement dans l’Islam. Mais ce faisant, il se concentre sur les qualités communicatives et expressives des œuvres d’art qui disposent d’un large éventail formel. L’argumentation se déroule de façon anhistorique à travers quelques exemples significatifs qui émanent principalement des premiers siècles du règne islamique, à commencer par le Dôme du Rocher et sa décoration en marbre et mosaïques, et par les boiseries de la mosquée al-Aqsa, dont la richesse et la puissance des motifs végétaux expriment directement le triomphe et l’expansion territoriale de l’époque. D’autres exemples, comme la façade ornée du palais de Mshatta, les travaux en stuc de Samarra et les ivoireries fatimides, montrent des modes artistiques différents d’un art prétendument décoratif, des modes qui résistent à des schémas d’interprétation universels et taxinomiques et qui, vus de près, dépassent largement les seuls ingrédients décoratifs et le statut de phénomène superficiel. C’est donc le terme même d’ornement qui devient douteux. Il faudrait plutôt poser la question d’une véritable « ornementologie » qui, parallèlement à l’iconologie, pourrait convenir davantage aux caractéristiques de cette variante de l’expression artistique.

Der Rückgriff auf historische Kunststile war keine Erfindung des 19. Jahrhunderts. Neu war jedoch ein pluralistisches Stilverständnis, das in enger Relation zu den zeitgenössischen sozialen, konfessionellen und politischen Gegebenheiten stand. Dieses Buch betrachtet die jeweiligen Auftraggeber, erklärt den assoziativen Einsatz der historischen Stile, und befasst sich mit der Welt der Rezipienten und Kunstschaffenden.

This chapter explores some problems in imagination and empiricism when digital photography forms the fundamental evidential basis for the scholarly examination of art-historical artifacts. The deep idealism of a commitment to photography as a form of objective representation of real objects, necessary to all those scholarly disciplines founded on using photographs to make historical arguments and to defend them evidentially through the images supplied in a publication, is in profound conflict with the ways digital data functions (and the scholarly community’s relative collective inexperience in understanding these ways). The focus of my discussion is on a riveting new discovery of a unique and controversial decorated papyrus from the first century BC (or AD?).

Author: Belmonte, Carmen; Genre: Journal Article; Published in Print: 2017; Title: Staging colonialism in the &quot;other&quot; Italy : art and ethnography at Palermo&apos;s national exhibition (1891/92)

From a sociocultural point of view, the term modern and its implications have formed, shaped, and even dictated the collective identity of the twentieth century. Therefore, questions relating to the birth of this term, its assessment, its manipulative methods, and especially its mechanisms of use, appliance, and adaptation must be critically addressed. The discourse of modernism within the postcolonial context in Asia and Africa seems to be unavoidable. This essay discusses a particular moment in the history of Egypt, in which a modern supplement, or rather injection, was slipped into the blood of the Egyptian national identity. Thus, this essay deals with modernity in translation in the postcolonial zone and contributes to the effort to highlight the artistic activity in the Muslim world in the twentieth century—a century that has been mainly defined as Western and usually excludes any non-European and non-Western components from its modern discourse. In this article, several drawings and paintings of the modern Egyptian artist Abdel Hadi Al-Gazzar are discussed. The core of the discussion, however, centers on four of al-Gazzar's surrealist drawings that also include surrealist poems, written either by Al-Gazzar or by the Alexandrian poet Ahmad Mursi. These works of art clearly adopt the surrealist aesthetic language, both visual and verbal. The drawings illustrate a particular zeitgeist in the Egyptian artistic milieu and mirror the individual and genuine artistic response of Al-Gazzar to the utopian and almost mythical status given to surrealism in Egypt in the first half of the twentieth century. In addition, his works will be dealt with here as a reflection of the changing social and political context in Egypt at the end of the 1940s and during the 1950s.

The present volume gathers together the papers given at the two-parts conference "Photo Archives and the photographic memory of art History". The first part was held at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London on 16 - 17 june, and the second at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut, on 29 - 31 october 2009.

Librarians, archivists, and curators today meet unique challenges when facing huge numbers of photographs accumulated in their institutions. Coming to terms with these masses in a responsible way means to reflect on cataloguing and digitization standards able to record their (material) complexity. It also means to constantly justify a series of investments: in cataloguing and digitization projects, but also in storage space, restoration, archival and conservation materials, not to speak of human resources. It means, ultimately, to reflect on the systems of value that one decides to apply while dealing with these holdings: the dematerialization rhetoric that often goes hand-in-hand with digitization campaigns tends to increase their fragility, on the other side we are confronted more and more often with the ‘contemporary repackaging of erstwhile ephemeral and disposable photographic prints' that acquire a new ‘archival value’. 1 In this short essay I will focus on these systems of value. My aim is to offer some methodological tools to deal with documentary photographs in art historical institutions. These instruments derive from the intersection of photographic and archival theories and practices that shaped my experience as Head of the Photothek at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max Planck Institute, for more than a decade.

BACKGROUND: It has been indicated that rotator cuff tears, especially large or massive ones, can cause suprascapular neuropathy. When such a diagnosis has been established, it is still unknown whether an arthroscopic release of the superior transverse scapular ligament during cuff repair can change the course of this neuropathy. METHODS/DESIGN: This is a single-center, double-blinded randomized controlled trial for which 42 patients with large or massive repairable rotator cuff tears and suprascapular neuropathy will be recruited and followed up at 6 and 12 months. Nerve function will be measured by nerve conduction and electromyography studies preoperatively and at the selected follow-up periods. Patients will be randomly divided into equally numbered groups, the first one being the control group. Patients of this group will undergo arthroscopic repair of the rotator cuff without combined arthroscopic release of the superior transverse scapular ligament; in the second group the ligament will be released. The primary objective is to test the null hypothesis that arthroscopic repair of large/massive rotator cuff tears in patients with combined suprascapular neuropathy provides equivalent outcomes to one-stage arthroscopic cuff repair where the superior suprascapular ligament is additionally released. The secondary objective is to search for a relation between rotator cuff tear size and degree of suprascapular nerve recovery. The tertiary objective is to demonstrate any relation between rotator cuff muscle fatty infiltration grade and degree of suprascapular nerve function. Patients, clinicians during follow-up clinics and the neurologist will be blinded to the type of surgery performed. DISCUSSION: To the best of our knowledge, we are unaware of any prospective, randomized double-blinded studies with similar objectives. So far, the evidence suggests a positive correlation between massive rotator cuff tears and suprascapular neuropathy. However, there is mixed evidence suggesting that neuropathy can be effectively treated with rotator cuff repair with or without release of the superior transverse scapular ligament. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov registration number NCT02318381 ; date of initial release: 5 December 2014.

The PHAROS consortium of fourteen international art historical photo archives is digitizing the over 20 million images (with accompanying documentation) in its combined collections and has begun to construct a common access platform using Linked Open Data and the ResearchSpace software. In addition to resulting in a rich and substantial database of images for art-historical research, the PHAROS initiative supports the development of shared standards for mapping and sharing photo archive metadata, as well as for best practices for working with large digital image collections and conducting computational image analysis. Moreover, alongside their digitization efforts, PHAROS member institutions are considering the kinds of art-historical questions the resulting database of images could be used to research. This article indicates some of the prospective research directions stimulated by modern technologies, with the aim of exploring the epistemological potential of photographic archives and challenging the boundaries between the analogue and the digital.

Fluorescence LIDAR imaging has been already proposed in several studies as a valuable technique for the remote diagnostics and documentation of the monumental surfaces, with main applications referring to the detection and classification of biodeteriogens, the characterization of lithotypes, the detection and characterization protective coatings and also of some types of pigments. However, the conservation and documentation of the cultural heritage is an application field where a highly multi-disciplinary, integrated approach is typically required. In this respect, the fluorescence LIDAR technique can be particularly useful to provide an overall assessment of the whole investigated surface, which can be profitably used to identify those specific areas in which further analytical measurements or sampling for laboratory analysis are needed. This paper presents some representative examples of the research carried out in the frame of the PRIMARTE project, with particular reference to the LIDAR data and their significance in conjunction with the other applied techniques. One of the major objectives of the project, actually, was the development of an integrated methodology for the combined use of data by using diverse techniques: from fluorescence LIDAR remote sensing to UV fluorescence and IR imaging, from IR thermography, georadar, 3D electric tomography to microwave reflectometry, from analytical techniques (FORS, FT-IR, GC-MS) to high resolution photo-documentation and historical archive studies. This method was applied to a 'pilot site', a chapel dating back to the fourteenth century, situated at 'Le Campora' site in the vicinity of Florence. All data have been integrated in a multi-medial tool for archiving, management, exploitation and dissemination purposes.

Contents Introduction: and the Museum Benoit Junod, Georges Khalil, Stefan Weber, Gerhard Wolf The Role of the Museum in the Study and Knowledge of Oleg Grabar Concert of Things. Thoughts on Objects of in the Museum Context Stefan Weber Representations of The Concept of Art: Inherited Discourses and New Approaches Gulru Necipoolu at a Crossroads? Nasser Rabbat Intrinsic Goals and External Influence: On Some Factors Affecting Research and Presentation of Lorenz Korn The Study of at a Crossroads, and Humanity as a Whole Kirsten Scheid Preliminary Thoughts on an Entangled Presentation of Islamic Art Vera Beyer Context and Aesthetics Multivalent Paradigms of Interpretation and the Aura or Anima of the Object Avinoam Shalem The Stuff of History: Everyday Objects, the Construction of Ambiguous Meanings, and the Afterlife of Social Things Christian Sassmannshausen The Cultural Turn, the Spatial Turn, and the Writing of Middle Eastern History Gudrun Kramer The Power of Layers or the Layers of Power? The Social Life of Things as the Backbone of New Narratives Beshara Doumani Historian's Task: Make Sure the Object Does Not Turn Against Itself in the Museum Munir Fakher Eldin Aesthetics Versus Context? Towards New Strategies for the Study of the Object Martina Muller-Wiener Versus Material Culture: Museum of or Museum of Culture? Julia Gonnella Foundation and Change Subthemes and Overpaint: Exhibiting in American Museums Mary McWilliams Early History in Germany and Concepts of Object and Exhibition Jens Kroger and the Invention of the Masterpiece: Approaches in Early Twentieth-Century Scholarship Eva Troelenberg The Jameel Gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London: Working from Vision to Reality Juliette Fritsch Do You Speak Art? The Museological Laboratory Susan Kamel, Christine Gerbich, Susanne Lanwerd Museums of and Public Engagement Seif El-Rashidi Museums and Their Formation Miriam Kuhn Examples from the Museum World Concepts Behind the New Installation of in the David Collection Kjeld von Folsach The Option of Interim Reinstallation: Brooklyn Museum's Arts of the World Galleries Ladan Akbarnia The Museum of Art, Doha Oliver Watson in the Hermitage Museum: Projects and Plans Anton D. Pritula at the British Museum: Strategies and Perspectives Fahmida Suleman The Aga Khan Museum in Toronto Benoit Junod New Spaces for Old Treasures: Plans for the New Museum of at the Pergamon Museum Stefan Weber A Wooden Room with Many Doors - : Social, Physical and Intellectual Accessibility at the Museum of in Berlin Christine Gerbich Notes on Contributors Notes Sources Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Index

Purpose This paper aims at demonstrating how the material approach questions conventional hierarchies of photographic value, showing a way to deal with large quantities of photographs accumulated by scientific and scholarly disciplines in their archives. Design/methodology/approach For generations, these photographs have been considered as pure documentations of the objects represented in them (from artworks in museums to snowflakes under a microscope). Documentary photographs have been understood as mere working tools that can now be easily replaced by digital duplicates. Overcoming the long-established reduction of photographs to their visual content, the material approach shifts attention to masses of anonymous photographs that are often disregarded within institutions because they do not match museum systems of value based on uniqueness and authorship. Findings Focussing on photographic and archival practices in art history, this paper aims at demonstrating how conceptual and methodological tools such as “agency” and “materiality” can be made fruitful for theory and practice of photo archives able to explore their epistemological potential. A case study from the Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz allows an insight into historical and contemporary dynamics and practices of photographic archives. Originality/value With its interwoven strands of archival practice and academic research, the Photothek unboxes itself as a laboratory for the international, cross-disciplinary debate on the role and function of photographs and photographic archives in scholarship, suggesting a methodological path for the entire field. In conclusion, the paper shows that the first necessary step for a long-term conservation of photo archives is promoting research on the photographic objects.

the volume represents a significant contribution to the complex history of the conceptualization and pictorialization of the Prophet Muhammad in the West. It gives a rapid and though deep overview of the history of the making of an image of the Prophet Muhammad in Europe and thus reflects the whole history of the making of the image of Islam in the Latin West, from the early medieval times till the 19th century. The book also provides the reader with ready access to the most recent scholarship concerning the image of Muhammad in Europe, in the form of comprehensive footnotes provided throughout the text and an extensive bibliography.

Nowadays inflammation is commonly defined as a defensive reaction involving the immune system. This paper clarifies the historical roots of this definition. The Russian embryologist Metchnikoff made--100 years ago--the initial observations on phagocytosis that provided a definition of inflammation based on a cellular theory of immunity. Following the many attacks by those who favored the view that immunity was based upon humoral mechanisms, Bordet argued that Metchnikoff's cellular theory of inflammation could be reconciled with the theory of humoral immunity. This study helps the modern reader to grasp the theoretical assumptions supporting our concept of inflammation.