Uffizi Chair is born: free art lessons for all at the Uffizi Galleries


The Uffizi Galleries is inaugurating the Uffizi Chair, a series of lectures open to all. The first course, from Feb. 28 to June 6, will be taught by Curator of Classical Antiquities Fabrizio Paolucci. Future lecturers include Giorgio Agamben and Franco Cardini.

A place of culture not only for the conservation and exhibition of works, but also for the transmission of knowledge: with this goal, the Uffizi Galleries inaugurates the Uffizi Chair, a project that brings to the Florentine museum a true academic course, free and open to all. Announced by director Simone Verde, the program officially kicks off Feb. 28, with a series of 12 lectures given by Fabrizio Paolucci, curator of Classical Antiquities at the Galleries. The lectures will be held every Thursday in the Antonio Paolucci Auditorium at 5:15 p.m. and will continue through June 6. Each 45-minute lecture will also be made available online on the museum’s website and Facebook page to allow for wider enjoyment of the content. The first round of lectures will be dedicated to the theme Preserving and Popularizing Antiquity. Collecting classical statuary in Florence from the 15th to the 20th century: principles, events and exhibition criteria. A journey through the history of collecting, from medieval spolia to the birth of Renaissance collections, from the restoration of ancient sculpture in the Medici era to the 19th-century methods of classical art criticism.

“The Galleries are a place of scientific research and transmission of knowledge and expertise,” says Uffizi Director Simone Verde, “this is testified by this new initiative, conceived under the banner of both in-depth study and dissemination. Museums have, among their most important and vital social functions, that of being naturally spaces of cultural elaboration: and the Uffizi intends to fulfill this task in a systematic way as required by their fundamental public mission.”

Uffizi, Hall of Michelangelo
Uffizi, Michelangelo Room

A journey through the history of collecting

The first lecture will examine the value placed on ancient marble in the Middle Ages, considered relics of Roman greatness and often reused in new architectural contexts. With the Renaissance, the focus will shift to the emergence of the first collections of statuary, where classical art is no longer seen as mere salvage material, but as an aesthetic and cultural model. The course will explore the contribution of Florentine Humanism in rediscovering classical Greece and the fundamental role of the Medici family in the formation of the first great collections. Special attention will be paid to the phenomenon of restoration of ancient statues, a widespread practice in the 15th and 16th centuries that often transformed fragments of sculpture into new hybrid works, according to the taste of the time.



In the 17th and 18th centuries, European antiquarianism evolved, amid meticulous research and encyclopedic ambitions, while in Florence the Grand Dukes of Tuscany enriched the sculptural heritage, consolidating the Medici Museum of Sculpture, which would flow from the Pitti Palace into the Uffizi. Lectures will also examine the influence of the Enlightenment on the modern conception of the museum as a public and scientific institution, leading up to the nineteenth century, when archaeology established itself as an academic discipline and imposed new criteria for cataloguing and studying collections. Finally, changes in the perception of ancient statuary in the twentieth century will be analyzed, with the decline of historical collecting and the rise of new methodologies of study, such as Kopienkritik and Meisterforschung, developed in Germany to identify originals from their multiples.

Upcoming courses: Agamben and Cardini among faculty members

The Uffizi Chair will not stop at the first semester. Director Simone Verde has already announced the names of two influential scholars who will lead subsequent cycles: philosopher Giorgio Agamben and historian Franco Cardini.

The initiative marks an important step in the direction of a museum that not only preserves its heritage, but also acts as a center for research, dissemination and education, open to the community and academic debate. A model that recalls the idea of the Enlightenment museum as a place of education and access to knowledge, adapting it to the needs of the contemporary public.

Uffizi Chair is born: free art lessons for all at the Uffizi Galleries
Uffizi Chair is born: free art lessons for all at the Uffizi Galleries


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