Graduate Seminars
2026 Seminars and Workshops
Coming in July 2026.
Further details will be announced soon.
2025 Seminars and Workshops
In May, Matthew McKelway and graduate students in Japanese art traveled to Venice, together with Diane Bodart, Nicola Suthor (Yale University), and the graduate students of their joint seminar Strokes and Lines, for the workshop The Materiality of the Brushstroke, co-organized by Casa Muraro and the Mary Griggs Burke Center for Japanese Art. Bringing together scholars of Venetian and Japanese painting, this four-day workshop explored the disruptive brushstroke as an artistic gesture through a comparative approach. An introductory panel opened the discussions with presentations by McKelway and esteemed Japanese professors Arata Shimao and Ryusuke Masuki. Participants then had the opportunity to explore major sixteenth-century Venetian paintings still preserved in churches and palaces, visit painting conservation sites with Save Venice, and examine the material structure of Titian’s brushstrokes with conservator Giulio Bono. They also discussed the process of oil painting with the contemporary artist Nicola Samorì and explored the dynamics of brush and ink in Japanese painting under Shimao’s guidance.
Diane Bodart launched the first Casa Muraro/Save Venice "Art and Conservation in Venice" Summer Graduate Seminar this year, which she co-taught with Cleo Nisse ('23 PhD), assistant professor at the University of Groningen. The seminar, generously funded by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, offered twenty-two graduate students from Columbia University, University of Groningen, and Università Ca' Foscari the unique opportunity to learn about conservation in Venice by visiting laboratories and on-site restoration projects. During study sessions at the Save Venice archives, students learned to research conservation files and interpret technical images, ultimately integrating this knowledge into their art historical tools of inquiry. The course situated the study of preservation and restoration at the intersection of current disciplinary interests, including materiality and mediality, technical art history, the ecology of art, decay and loss, care and repair. Students had the opportunity to discuss these topics with art conservators, scientists, and heritage professionals. Highlights of the program included visits to numerous conservation projects, including Tintoretto's Last Supper and The Israelites in the Desert at San Giorgio Maggiore, the stucco and fresco decorations on the ceiling of the Sala delle Quattro Porte in the Palazzo Ducale, Carpaccio's paintings at the Scuola Dalmata, and Bellini's Pietà at the Scuola Vecchia della Misericordia
