Dear Colleagues,

I would like alert your attention to our program’s first academic conference. I hope that some of you will be able to come. Also we will be producing versions of the acts in two languages, the Italian one rather exactly replicating the conference while the English one will be its own book and may contain at least a handful of papers on themes not represented here (for example, restoration, the impact of Vasari’s schools on German or English museums etc…) so if any of you happen now to be working on a highly relevant topic not represented in the program below, we would be happy to consider an essay proposal for inclusion. In this case, please send a 500-700 word abstract and CV to mgahtanlorenzodemedici.it. We are expecting to publish the English book with Ashgate. Please understand that we may only add a few essays.

Cheers, Maia Gahtan
Program Director, MA Museum Studies
Marist-LdM-Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi-Università di Firenze

Giorgio Vasari and the Birth of the Museum

14-15 October 2011 (500th Anniversary of Birthday, 30 July 1511)
ex-chiesa S. Jacopo in Campo Corbolini, Florence

Giorgio Vasari has been extensively studied as a biographer of artists, historian of art, theorist of art, painter, architect, courtier to Cosimo I, ringleader for the inauguration of the Florentine Academy of Design, and collector of drawings. All of these activities had a substantial impact on the formation of museums in Early Modern Europe and their subsequent development. Perhaps no other 16th century artist and intellectual could boast such a broad and longstanding influence, though his precise contribution to this museological discourse has not been addressed in any sustained way. This conference seeks to fill this gap by bringing together scholars of Giorgio Vasari and scholars of historical museology.

14 October 2011

9.30 Opening Remarks:
Fabrizio Guarducci, President, Istituto Lorenzo de’ Medici
Cristina Scaletti, Assessore alla Cultura per la Regione Toscana
Maia Wellington Gahtan, Director, MA Museum Studies

10.00-12.00 Vasari’s Collections Chair: Cristina De Benedictis, Università degli Studi di Firenze
Decorazione e collezioni nelle case del Vasari di Arezzo e Firenze (Alessandro Cecchi, Galleria Palatina)
Vasari e il Libro dei Disegni: un Museo Cartaceo o Galleria Portatile (Anna Forlani Tempesti, Università degli Studi di Bologna)
Collecting with a Purpose: Vasari and Paper Memorials (Maia Wellington Gahtan, Istituto Lorenzo de’ Medici-Marist College)
Vasari, Paolo Giovio and Portrait Collections (Nadia Cannata, Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza)

Lunch Break

14.30-16.30 Vasari’s Exhibitions Chair: Alessandro Nova, Kunsthistorisches Institut
Vasari, Exhibitor of Art: Vasari and Medici Collections (Andrea Galdy, Collecting & Display, The Institute of Historical Research, London)
Vasari’s Quartieri in Palazzo Vecchio and his Ragionamenti: the Museological Dimension (Henk van Veen, University of Groningen)
Vasari, Borghini and Papal Portraits (Rick Scorza, London)
Giorgio Vasari, Architetto: la Galleria degli Uffizi (Claudia Conforti, Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata)

16.30 Coffee

15 October 2011

9.30-10.30 Roundtable Discussion: Joseph Alsop’s The Rare Art Traditions Revisited
Moderator: Shreve Simpson, Baltimore, MD
Participants: Nadia Cannata , Andrea Galdy, Elizabeth Pilliod, Monica Preti-Hamard, Rick Scorza, Henk van Veen, Ingrid Vermeulen

10.30 Coffee

11.30-12.30 Vasari’s Museological Concepts and their Afterlife Chair: Catherine Monbeig-Goguel, C.N.R.S., Musée du Louvre, Paris
Giorgio Vasari, Roma e i Primi Allestimenti delle Collezioni Medicee. Modelli e Conseguenze (Donatella Pegazzano, Università degli Studi di Firenze)
Gallerie di Ritratti, Biografie di Artisti e la Nascita delle Accademie e dei Musei (Tommaso Casini, Libera Università di Lingue e Communicazione-IULM, Milano)

Lunch Break

14.30-16.30 Vasari’s Museological Concepts and their Afterlife Chair: Catherine Monbeig-Goguel, C.N.R.S., Musée du Louvre, Paris
L’Accademia Fiorentina del Disegno e le sue Conseguenze Museologiche (Luigi Zangheri, Università degli Studi di Firenze and Director, Accademia delle Arti del Disegno)
Paper Museums and the Multimedia Practice of Art History. The case of Stefano Mulinari’s Storia Pratica (1778) in the Uffizi (Ingrid R. Vermeulen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Concetti Vasariani nell’Allestimento dei Musei Nazionali Francesi (Monica Preti-Hamard, Musée du Louvre)
Exclusion and Inclusion in Vasari’s Vite: Collecting and the Art Market (Elizabeth Pilliod, Princeton)

17.00 Concluding Remarks Cristina Acidini, Polo Museale Fiorentino