Giulia Beatrice receives Otto Hahn Medal 2026

The Max Planck Society has awarded Giulia Beatrice, research assistant at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, with the Otto Hahn Medal, in recognition of her outstanding dissertation, which examines the appropriation and entanglement of the Futurist avant-garde in the promotion of Italian colonial ambitions via propaganda during the Fascist era.

In her dissertation Avant-Garde Propaganda: Colonialism and Futurism, Giulia Beatrice examines visual and literary sources produced during the era of Italian Fascism, from 1910 through the 1940s, that depict Blackness and imperialist military campaigns against the peoples of Libya, Somalia, and Ethiopia.

Giulia Beatrice reconstructs the role of art within the Fascist regime’s cultural-political propaganda strategies and demonstrates how Futurist artists systematically promoted a colonial and subaltern perspective through modernist categories such as the “exotic,” the “primitive,” and the “barbaric.” In doing so, they contributed to the construction and dissemination of an Italian “colonial consciousness”. At the same time, she analyzes in detail how these artists supported Italy’s expansionist policies and, through direct encounters with African territories and peoples, developed new visual and cultural imaginaries. Her work makes a significant contribution to contemporary debates on colonial memory, racism, otherness, and representation, while actively countering a form of collective amnesia that continues to shape public memory of European – and especially Italian – colonial history.

Giulia Beatrice, Ph.D., is Scientific Assistant in the Department of Early Modern Art History in a Global Context at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History. She completed her dissertation, Avant-Garde Propaganda: Colonialism and Futurism, in July 2025 at the University of Zurich in co-tutèlle with Sapienza University of Rome, supervised by Professor Tristan Weddigen and Professor Claudio Zambianchi. She is a member of the research unit Decolonizing Italian Visual and Material Culture: From Nation-Building to the Present at the Hertziana.

The Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History conducts foundational research in the fields of Italian and global art and architectural history. It is one of the institutes of the Humanities Division of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e.V. The department headed by Professor Tristan Weddigen focuses on the study of art history from the Early Modern period to the present day.

The Otto Hahn Medal carries a prize of €7,500 and has been awarded annually since 1978 to young researchers in recognition of outstanding scientific achievements. The award is intended to encourage exceptionally talented early-career scholars to pursue academic or research careers in the future.