Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History
Research Initiatives
The Lise Meitner Group’s Research Initiatives consider the practical and theoretical repercussions that a specific form of loss poses for the discipline. They bring together scholars, conservators, curators, and artists to explore what those repercussions mean not only for objects but also for our approach to them.
“Waste” examined what we intentionally throw away. “Loot” addressed things that are taken away or intentionally destroyed. “Rework” looked at how care and repair alter objects over time. “Lacuna” is considering how loss has reshaped artworks and urban spaces. The Initiatives encourage a broad rethinking of loss as something that can materially transform, conceptually reclassify, and otherwise uncover new categories of object – a force that shapes both what is left of the history of art to study and the biases, limits, and lenses that inform how we study it.
Conceived in collaboration with affiliated academics and pre- and postdoctoral research fellows, each Initiative culminates in a multi-day series of events. At the core is an international conference that brings scholars together around a single topic. This convening is complemented by partnerships with local collections and institutions, resulting in a calendar of related programming that includes special presentations by artists, keynote addresses by leading experts, roundtables, and site visits around the city of Rome – itself a landscape of objects lost, spoiled, reused, and recovered.
The outcomes of each Annual Research Initiative are collected in a volume of essays, forming part of a dedicated five-volume editorial series published by Officina Libraria. This is the central collective output of the Lise Meitner Group.
Waste
The initiative addressed the materiality, spatiality, and processing of waste in the early modern workshop.
The initiative investigated the ways in which conflict and its resolution moved, modified, and reclassified art objects in the long early modern period.
Collaborations: Museo dell'Arte Salvata/Museo Nazionale Romano; The Inheritance of Looting, University of Bern; St Andrews School of Art History; Heisenberg Project,Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law Fellows and guest scholars: Sarah Rosenthal (Harvard); Sarah Petrilli Jones (Yale/Scuola Normale Superiore/American Academy); Francesco Guidi (BHMPI); Julia Vázquez (BHMPI); Guido Rebecchini (2025, The Courtauld); Alfie Robinson (2025, St Andrews) Site visits: Palazzo della Marina; Museo Centrale del Risorgimento; Sacrario delle Bandiere; Istituto Storico e di Cultura dell’Arma del Genio; Museo delle Civiltá; Chiesa di Santa Maria in Vallicella; Museo Storico Navale Annual Conference: Event Page; Call for Papers; Poster; Program Conference organizers: Julia Vázquez (BHMPI), Francesca Borgo (BHMPI/St Andrews) Keynote speakers: Ananda Cohen-Aponte (Cornell), Erin Thompson (CUNY) Artist intervention: Sammy Baloji, Justin Randolph Thomson Ouput: Loot&Repair (DIS/APPEARANCES series; Officina Libraria, 2026)
Rework
Erasing the original state of the object, alterations reflect shifts in taste, circumstance, and objectives. This initiative takes the most easily altered support, paper, as its main case study.
The initiative explores the compensatory methods of confronting lacunae as they occur across disciplines, looking beyond the question of structural reintegration.
Collaborations: Fabbrica di San Pietro, The Clark Art Institute Fellows and guest scholars: Chiara Capulli (BHMPI), Cleo Nisse (University of Groningen), Ronah Sadan (2024, Aarhus University), Annika Finne (2023, IFA), Rossella Monopoli (2023, Warburg Institute), Oliver Wunsch (2023, Boston College), Davide Gasparotto (J. Paul Getty Museum), Camilla Pietrabissa (IUAV and Ca’ Foscari), Antonina Tetzlaff (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Giordano Ocelli (BHMPI), Giorgio Caravale (Roma Tre) Site visits: Saint Peter’s Tribune Conference organizers: Caroline Fowler (The Clark), Francesca Borgo (BHMPI/St Andrews) Keynote speakers: Irma Passeri (Yale University Art Gallery), Peter N. Miller (American Academy in Rome) Artist Intervention: Ethan Philbrick (the Poetry Project, NY) Outputs: Displacement and Reconfiguration: The Effects of the Florentine Guasto of 1529 on Devotional Spaces and Networks of Artistic Patronage (Silvana Editore 2026) Event Page Lacuna. Conservation, Law, and the Ethics of the Incomplete | Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History
