Aby Warburg: Metamorphosis and Memory

Written and directed by Judith Wechsler, Aby Warburg: Metamorphosis and Memory (2016; 60 min.) tells the story of this innovative and influential art historian. With interests that ranged from the Italian Renaissance to Hopi ritual dances, from frescoes to postage stamps, Warburg sought to combine the fields of art history, anthropology, and religion. He explored the afterlife of antiquity, the tensions between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, and the secular and religious in Renaissance paintings of Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. Told largely through Warburg’s own words and interviews with leading Warburg scholars, this documentary traces the development of his ideas in the context of his life and times.

Following the screening, there will be a conversation between director Judith Wechsler and Benjamin Buchloh, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Modern Art in Harvard’s History of Art and Architecture department.

Judith Wechsler is an art historian and filmmaker. She has written and directed 28 films, predominantly on art. Her film The Passages of Walter Benjamin (2014) was made with the cooperation of the Benjamin archives in Berlin and Jerusalem and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. She has served as the National Endowment for the Humanities Professor in Art History at Tufts University, taught for many years at MIT, and was a visiting professor at Harvard and the École normale supérieure in Paris. Many of her films are distributed by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and are archived at the Harvard Film Archive.

Presented by the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, in partnership with the Harvard Art Museums.

The event will take place in Menschel Hall, Lower Level. Please enter the museums via the entrance on Broadway.

Free admission

Complimentary parking available in the Broadway Garage, 7 Felton Street, Cambridge.

Support for this program is provided by the Richard L. Menschel Endowment Fund.