Warburg Institute

Description

The Warburg Institute is globally renowned as a leading centre for the study of the interplay between ideas, images, and society. Founded in Hamburg by the eminent historian Aby Warburg (1866-1929), who was a distinguished member of one of Europe's great banking families, the Institute was forced into exile in England in 1933 due to the political upheavals of the time. Remarkably, it was the only institution that managed to escape the clutches of Nazi Germany and survive intact in Britain to this day. In 1944, the Institute became part of the University of London and since 1958 has been located in a building designed by Charles Holden, which opens onto three of Bloomsbury's historic squares.

Warburg's quest to trace the roots of the Renaissance to ancient cultures led to a profound change in the way the world is viewed. He established a research institute that served as a haven and creative hub for some of the greatest scholars, curators, and artists of a turbulent century.

The Institute offers postgraduate courses, hosts research projects, and provides an array of public programmes. Its open-stack library holds 360,000 volumes, still arranged according to Warburg's original structure. The Institute's Photographic Collection houses around 400,000 analogue photographs, and it possesses one of the most extensive archives of any research centre in the humanities.

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University affiliation(s)

University of London
London

Additional Partnerships

Courtauld Institute of Art; Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Italy; Institut für Kunst- und Bildgeschichte, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany; Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max Planck Institute for Art History, Italy; Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University, USA; Centre for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands