Warburg Director's Seminar - 'The Hans-Würtz-Collection: unlocking a unique body of disability related images'

Professor Simon Mckeown (Teeside University) and Professor Oliver Musenberg (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)

The hidden Hans-Würtz-Collection is a unique body of disability related images and artworks. It was assembled in Germany between 1910–1933, a critical period in European history that saw the rise of National Socialism and its extreme attendant ableist and disablist thought and action. Covering a time span ranging from antiquity to the first half of the 20th century, the collection comprises around 3,500 images – most of them reproductions – in the form of drawings, cartoons, lithographs, engravings, magazine snippets, photographs and postcards; several paintings, as well as 180 pottery, ivory and wood statuettes. Würtz (1875-1958) amassed material with the same passion (if not finance and scale) as Augustus Pitt Rivers and Henry Wellcome. He was, unlike Wellcome or Rivers, unfortunate to be a collector at the same time as the Nazi rise to power in Berlin, to which he and his collection ultimately became a victim. 

In this talk Professor Simon Mckeown and Professor Oliver Musenberg will introduce this extremely innovative collection, and present approaches to their analysis of the images undertaken within an AHRC/DFG funded international project. 

This event is part of the Warburg Director's Seminar series, which brings leading scholars and writers to the Institute to share new work and fresh perspectives on key issues in their fields. 

ATTENDANCE FREE WITH ADVANCE BOOKING