International Workshop – Florence, 22-23 September 2026
Organized by the Lise Meitner Group “Coded Objects” at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max Planck Institute and the Medici Archive Project.
Organizers: Karina Pawlow (Saarland University / KHI) and Rebecca I. Arnheim (Tel Aviv University).
When is a drawing complete, independent, or “finished?” Is the concept of completion a conscious decision made by the artist, or something that happens later, in the hands of collectors, dealers, curators, or algorithms? The aim of this workshop is to investigate when and whether drawings were considered “finished” and how that sense of completion is frustrated as drawings move between contexts from the fifteenth century to today. The workshop treats drawings as independent objects that circulate and accrue economic and emotional value, and generate knowledge across art, science, design, and technology. Thus, drawings are understood here as sites of ongoing inquiry, experimentation, and reasoning, capable of generating unique forms of knowledge, visualization, and conceptual connection. Developed in dialogue with the research trajectories of the Medici Archive Project and the Lise Meitner Group “Coded Objects” and their focus on processual and methodological approaches, this workshop treats “completion” not as a final state, but as a series of active thresholds. This workshop intends to focus on those moments when a drawing is judged, classified, circulated, or stabilized. The papers address how drawings shift status as they move between studios, museums, archives, markets, and digital platforms from the 1400s to today. How and when do drawings exceed their initial roles as studies, models, technical records, or designs to be treated as finished works or circulating images in their own right? What forms of knowledge, agency, gaps, new connections or authorship do drawings perform when disentangled from the artistic, technical, or scientific processes they were meant to support or contexts they emerged from? How do these shifting roles reshape the criteria by which a drawing is recognized as “complete,” or even as a drawing?
Location and Access
This two-day workshop will be hosted across three venues: on the first day at the Medici Archive Project (Palazzo Alberti), and on the second day at the Kunsthistorisches Institut (Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai) with a visit to the drawing collection of the Museo Galileo, organized in collaboration with the museum.
Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut (via dei Servi 51, 50122 Florence)
Palazzo Alberti, The Medici Archive Project (via de’ Benci 10, 50122 Florence)
To attend the event in person no registration is necessary.
Info: education@medici.org / info@khi.fi.it