On 28 April 2025, the ItalianROSE team hosted a day-long event in collaboration with the staff at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and Cambridge Visual Culture (CVC) as part of the reinterpretation and rehang project of the museum’s Italian art collection.
The aim of the event was to put specialists from across different disciplines, institutions, and curatorial backgrounds in conversation with the staff at the museum, exploring how the notion of the ‘Italian Renaissance’ can be challenged and diversified through the display of objects in the Fitzwilliam galleries.
Rather than a conventional academic workshop, the structure of the event was deliberately dialogical and non-hierarchical: each themed session consisted of a five-minute presentation, a five-minute response, and a ten-minute open discussion. This flexible, conversational format encouraged spontaneity, cross-disciplinary insight, and active engagement from speakers, respondents, and auditors alike.
Participants were asked to reflect on three central themes:
- how objects, materials, and techniques can serve as evidence of religious and cultural contact, global networks, and trade routes;
- the role of minorities (such as enslaved people, migrants, and other ‘outsiders’) as agents of artistic and social change;
- the tension between historical approaches to Renaissance art and contemporary curatorial practice.
Our morning sessions took place in Gallery 7, also known as the ‘Courtauld Gallery’, sitting among the objects under consideration for reinterpretation. Robert Brennan (The Courtauld Institute of Art) and Eva Namusoke (Fitzwilliam Museum) opened the day. They were followed by Mariam Rosser-Owen (V&A Museum) with David Farrell-Banks (Fitzwilliam Museum), and Ruth Ezra (University of St Andrews) with Suzanne Reynolds (Fitzwilliam Museum). After a convivial lunch, Marta Ajmar (University of Warwick) conversed with Erma Hermens (Fitzwilliam Museum), and Alison Wright (University College London) with Donal Cooper (University of Cambridge).
The day concluded with two back-to-back handling sessions led by Vicky Avery and Ellen Gage. Participants were invited to engage closely with objects that were at the centre of their presentations and responses throughout the day.
The handling session brought forward two key questions:
- what overarching themes frame the gallery rehang? And what wording should introduce the visitor to the rooms?
- which single object, juxtaposition, or cluster based on objects from the museum collection, best incapsulates the spirit of the proposed reinterpretation strategy?
These questions naturally fed into the final discussion, from which emerged a shared sense of possibility. By embracing complexity, it is our hope that the museum will offer visitors a richer, more nuanced, and more inclusive understanding of the Italian Renaissance.
Stay tuned for more!
Alison Wright presents in front of Juan Anton Diego Sanchez’s Deposition during one of the workshop’s afternoon sessions
