History of Art and Fine Arts Academies

From their very foundation, the Academies of Fine Arts represented, in Italy and throughout Europe, a vibrant and fertile cultural reality, in which the teaching of artistic practices was, ab origine, accompanied by historical and theoretical instruction, considered essential to the education of young artists. 

Chairs in Art History, Aesthetics, and related disciplines are well documented, together with their respective professors and syllabi; equally traceable are the holdings of books (the cores of academic libraries), drawings, prints, photographs, objects, and teaching materials. This scholarly conference aims to shed light on the establishment of the teaching of Art History within the Academies of Fine Arts, with particular attention to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the “historical” Academies were founded, while also taking into account the crucial sixteenth-century “avant-gardes” of the Florentine Accademia delle Arti del Disegno and the Roman Accademia di San Luca, and its subsequent developments.

For many years, the topic of art-historical pedagogy has been at the centre of significant research in the history of art criticism, which has illuminated the dynamics and issues surrounding the introduction and institutionalisation of the discipline between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Such research, however, has tended to focus on teaching within universities and secondary schools. The parallel and chronologically earlier field of the Academies of Fine Arts, no less important, has long remained in the shadows. Today's symposium aims to address this oversight, bringing together distinguished scholars from both academy and university settings. Approaching the subject from multiple angles and perspectives, the conference aims to restore the vitality, richness, and complexity of historical and theoretical reflection on the arts, as well as the related pedagogical practices within the Academies of Fine Arts, their impact on artistic production, and their importance for the evolution of art history and art criticism. Sponsored by SISCA (Italian Society for the History of Art Criticism), the conference proceedings will be published in a monographic issue of the journal Predella (https://predella.it/), in both online and print editions.