The Warburg Institute

📚 This week’s new acquisitions tables in the Warburg Reading room feature topics such as #IslamicPhilosophy, the #Sociology of #Art, early #Martyr narratives and #Donatello. 📚

Distilling The Alchemical Feminine A lecture by Dr M.E. Warlick marking the publication of The Alchemical Feminine: Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Alchemical Images

New recording: Distilling The Alchemical Feminine with Dr M.E. Warlick (University of Denver), chaired by Dr Georgiana Hedesan (University of Oxford).

Alchemical images, gender, sexuality and a “Chemical Wedding”.

Watch: warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

#Alchemy #ArtHistory

Ahead of our opening this week, Conspiracies is in the @financialtimes.com!

Read @drmatthewsweet.bsky.social's piece here: www.ft.com/content/13f7...

Enjoy my story of an impossible encounter, where Aby Warburg and Shimomura Toratarō got off linear timelines. Where San Francisco became next-door to Yokohama. Where WWII Japan’s ‘overcoming modernity (近代の超克)’ reworked #Astrology in #EarlyModern Europe. #History #HistoryOfArt #HistSci #PhilHist 🗃️

“My Heart Is Overflowing”: Aby Warburg, Mary Hertz, and Love as Creativity A chance encounter in Florence brings Mary Hertz into view as artist and interlocutor, alongside the first stirrings of Warburg’s Botticelli and Venus research.

Valentine’s Day is nearly here 💘 and we’re marking it with a Warburg love story.

in this blog, Marianna Leszczyk introduces Mary Hertz (later Mary Warburg), tracing her early encounters and correspondence with Aby Warburg in Florence, and the emergence of his Botticelli and Venus research.

Interested in postgraduate study at the Warburg Institute?

Join our in-person Open Day on 26 February to learn more about our MA and PGCert programmes, as well as MPhil and PhD research opportunities.

warburg.sas.ac.uk/study-us/stu...

Modernity as Detour: Aby Warburg and the Kyoto School From a cancelled 1896 voyage to Yokohama to the 1942 “Overcoming Modernity” symposium, Xinyi Wen traces how Warburg’s ideas travelled into twentieth century Japanese debates on modernity.

New blog post: “Modernity as Detour: Aby Warburg and the Kyoto School” by Xinyi Wen.

From Warburg’s unrealised Japan trip (1896) to Renaissance astrology in Japan’s modernity debates (1942).

warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

#WarburgInstitute #IntellectualHistory #HistoryOfIdeas

The new acquisitions display in our library just got bigger!

Now with two tables of new items, you are sure to find something that interests you. Make sure to pop by the Warburg’s Reading Room to see this week’s picks. 📚

The latest volume of the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes is out now!

From the medieval reception of the Antonine Itinerary to women’s Latin writing in the Quattrocento, and numismatic chronology in the Republic of Letters.

Read here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/jwci/cur...

Image: Sam Keogh, The Unicorn Surrenders to a Maiden Cartoon, mixed media installation with performance, 2024, credit: Kerlin Gallery

Conspiracies opens at the Warburg next week!

An exhibition of work by four contemporary artists exploring how conspiracy has shapeshifted across cultural and political history.

Find out more: warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

#LondonExhibition #ContemporaryArt #Conspiracy

Palampore (India); cotton; H x W: 289.6 x 137.2 cm (114 x 54 in.) Repeat H x W: 40.6 x 78.7 cm (16 x 31 in.); Museum purchase from Au Panier Fleuri Fund; 1959-146-1; Cooper Hewitt Museum. Public Domain.

Make sure to join us online on Monday 2 February for @amaterialworld.bsky.social talk 'Experiencing Chintz in Early Modern Japan: Global Textile Encounters and Local Printing Practices'

warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

#MaterialCulture #History

New display explores the Library of Michael Innes A new display in the Wohl Special Collections Reading Room ‘Alchemical Networks: The Library of Michael Innes’ explores the rare book collection of Michael Innes (1897-1980).

A new display in our Wohl Special Collections Reading Room ‘Alchemical Networks: The Library of Michael Innes’ explores the rare book collection of Michael Innes (1897-1980).

Handle rare materials on witchcraft, Caribbean cosmologies & tarot in this short course with Pragya Dhital.

3–5 March 2026, 5:30–7:30pm (Senate House + Warburg).
Limited to 15.
Book by 23 February.
In-person only.

#RareBooks #OccultHistory #Magic #Witchcraft

warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

The Desire for Syria in Medieval England Please enable JavaScript in your web browser to get the best experience.

"...a startling work of scholarship, imagination, and defamiliarisation, this book is as exciting as it's original"

Join us this Friday evening for the launch of 'The Desire for Syria in Medieval England' by E. K. Myerson: warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

#Medieval #Syria

On Lewis Carroll’s birthday, a look at a Warburg Library copy of 'Through the Looking-Glass'.

This 1897 edition features Aby Warburg’s bookplate, linking it to his original collection, from which today’s Library grew.

#LewisCarroll #LibraryBook #RareBooks #Library

With books on the mysteries of nature, confraternities, and Eugene Delacroix, this week’s New Acquisitions display in the Warburg’s Reading Room is well worth a browse!

#EugeneDelacroix #Library #LibraryBooks

A person looks at an exhibition of images taken from the image of the black archive. Photo by Stephen White & Co

“There’s no finger-pointing here; just sonority, speculation, the poetry of deep thought.” @prospectmagazine.co.uk

Looking for something to do this weekend?

Black Atlas closes on Saturday 31 January 2026. Make sure to view it whilst you can!

warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

A Tortoise in Search of Meaning: Cryptic Animal Symbolism in Paolo Ramusio’s Vision Short-Term Frances Yates Fellow Giulia Depoli unpacks one of the strangest details in Ramusio’s fifteenth-century vision, and what it reveals about how symbols acquire new lives.

A diamond-shelled “treasurer” tortoise that dispenses money and predicts the future?

Short-Term Frances Yates Fellow Giulia Depoli explores Paolo Ramusio’s fifteenth-century visionary text on the Warburg blog.

A Material World - 'Experiencing Chintz in Early Modern Japan: Global Textile Encounters and Local Printing Practices'

Join us for our next event: 'Experiencing Chintz in Early Modern Japan: Global Textile Encounters and Local Printing Practices' by Keiko Suzuki (Ritsumeikan University)
🗓️ 2 Feb
🕰️ 5:30pm UK time
📍online @warburginstitute.bsky.social
Book for free: warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...
#textiles #history

📣 Job opportunity: Digital Communications Officer (maternity leave cover)

We are recruiting a part-time Digital Communications Officer (12-month fixed-term contract)!

17.5 hrs per week
£37,085 pro rata
Apply by 25 Jan 2026

Find out more and apply: warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/... #CommsJobs

📚 Job opportunity: Graduate Library Trainee (2026 to 2027)

Join the Warburg Institute Library for a paid year of training before library school.
Apply by: 1 February 2026

Find out more and apply: warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

Films of the Year: 2025 From a documentary account of a re-energised street to an adaptation of a conversation in 1970s New York, here’s our critic’s top ten

“There’s no finger-pointing here; just sonority, speculation, the poetry of deep thought.”

Prospect has chosen 'Black Atlas' as one of its 'Films of the Year: 2025'
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/7197...

Find out more about the exhibition & plan your visit: warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

Interested in studying at the Warburg?

Registrations are now open for our upcoming Open Day!

Tuesday 26 February, 2:30 - 5:30pm

Find out more and register: warburg.sas.ac.uk/study-us/stu...

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With subjects ranging from political propaganda to the metaphysics of light, the new acquisitions table in the Reading Room has been updated.

#PoliticalPropaganda #LibraryBooks #Metaphysics

Textual Criticism and the Transmission of Texts - 2026 This course takes the participants through the entire process of textual criticism.

Upcoming short course: Textual Criticism and the Transmission of Texts

Increase your skills in producing critical editions and stemma codicum, with a mix of theoretical background and hands-on training.

16 Aprril - 7 May 2026, 2-4 pm | Online

The Desire for Syria in Medieval England Please enable JavaScript in your web browser to get the best experience.

"...a remarkable, intricate, and wonderful story of cultural entanglement"

Join us for the book launch of 'The Desire for Syria in Medieval England' with author EK Myerson and the Warburg's current Assetto Creative Practitioner-in-Residence, Emii Alrai.

The Muses and the Compilers: Allegorical Frontispieces and the Enlightenment Image of Antiquity Floris Solleveld explores how eighteenth-century scholars used frontispieces to turn the study of antiquity into a science, while still speaking in an older visual language.

New on the blog: Floris Solleveld explores allegorical frontispieces and the Enlightenment image of antiquity.

warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

#EarlyModern #BookHistory #PrintCulture #IntellectualHistory

📣One week today! @warburginstitute.bsky.social

#arthistory #history #historylover #learning #earlymodern #frenchhistory #materialculture

Seeing Green: Nature in Northern European Art, 1550–1680 This short course explores the connections between European depictions of nature and the major religious, cultural and intellectual frameworks that shaped these works’ production and reception.

Interested in early modern art and visual culture?

Seeing Green offers an accessible introduction to how images of nature shaped, and were shaped by, religious belief, scientific inquiry and Europe’s encounters with the wider world.

warburg.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

Textual Criticism and the Transmission of Texts - 2026 Please enable JavaScript in your web browser to get the best experience.

Learn the processes of transcription, textual criticism and the construction of critical editions and stemma codicum, all central to understanding how medieval texts were transmitted and received."

Book now for our online short course led by Dr Anna Somfai: