RSA Annual Congress in San Francisco

The Institute of Art History participated in the 72nd Congress of the Renaissance Society of America, held from 19 to 21 February 2026 in San Francisco (USA), by organizing two thematic panels. The panels presented research on Renaissance architecture and on the work of Italian architects in cities along the eastern Adriatic coast and across the broader area of Eastern Europe.

The panel entitled Negotiated Power, Shaped Spaces: Authority, Patronage, and Public Architecture in the Eastern Adriatic was organized and chaired by Darka Bilić. Within this panel, Katarina Horvat Levaj delivered a paper titled Renaissance Dubrovnik Between Florentine Architects and Local Architectural Tradition, while Andrej Žmegač discussed the social and architectural specificities of the Hvar Arsenal in his presentation Socializing at the Hvar Arsenal?

As part of the panel Travelling Italian Renaissance Architects and Local Traditions in Southeast and Northeast Europe, Ana Šverko presented her paper The Sanmichelis in Istria and Dalmatia: Renaissance Fortification Modernization in a Local Context, in which, alongside the modernization of Renaissance fortifications, she also addressed the later influence of the Sanmicheli family on European architecture up to the twentieth century. In the same session, Tatiana Sizonenko (California State University San Marcos) delivered a presentation entitled From the Golden House of Nero to the Palace of the Muscovite Czar.

The organization of the first thematic panel was carried out within the framework of the institutional project From the Local to the Regional: Art of the Adriatic Croatia from the Middle Ages to the 19th Century (LoRegUm, 2023–2027), while the second panel was organized in connection with the institutional project Architecture and Visual Arts of Urban Ensembles in Croatia (UrbArh, 2023–2027). Both projects are funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.

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Contacts:
Darka Bilić
Katarina Horvat-Levaj
Ana Šverko
Andrej Žmegač

#LoRegUm #UrbArh #NextGenerationEU