History and Outreach

Dating back to Johan Huizinga and Horst Gerson, art & architectural history in Groningen has a long-standing tradition and produced many well-known art historians, among whom initiators of the field of urban studies, technical art history and two directors of the Rijksmuseum. The bi-annual Horst Gerson lecture features international art historians of high repute since 1981, including Horst W. Janson, David Freedberg, Linda Nochlin, Elizabeth McGrath and many others. They are published individually and from 2015 onwards by the Walraff-Richarts Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte.

The institute has an international repute for its research in Italian Renaissance Art and heads the Section Italian Studies of the Dutch Postgraduate School for Art History .

It is famous for the interdisciplinary development of architectural history to include urban development, landscaping and social geography.