‘Places need renewal or they disappear’: Warburg Institute reborn

In a corner of the Warburg Institute’s new exhibition space is a haunting tribute to lost libraries and exiled authors. Designed by Edmund de Waal, the small pavilion lies scattered with books by displaced writers, from Ovid and Dante to Judith Kerr, while its exterior bears the names of great libraries lost to war – including Nineveh, in 6th-century BC Assyria, to those recently destroyed in Tripoli and Mosul.

The British artist, who has described it as “the most significant sculpture of my life”, knew exactly where it should go. “He gave it to us because, he said, the Warburg is the library of exile,’” reflected Bill Sherman, the institute’s director.

Mr de Waal’s reasoning relates to the institution’s intriguing origins: the famous open-stack library overlooking Bloomsbury’s Gordon Square began life in Hamburg in the late 19th century, when Aby Warburg, the scion of a German banking dynasty, used his family’s vast wealth to establish a remarkable private collection of books, photographs and images.

Four years after Professor Warburg’s death in 1929, the Nazis came to power and it became clear that the library – whose founder was Jewish, as were many of its staff and supporters – would need to be evacuated. Thanks to high-level political support in Westminster, it arrived in the UK in 1934. After several temporary homes, the collection was given, in trust, to the University of London in 1944, on the proviso that it provide a permanent home, which was eventually finished in 1957.

However, while its reputation as an unmatched scholarly collection has flourished among humanities scholars, the Warburg’s public profile is all but non-existent. Even students thronging around the nearby entrances to UCL or SOAS University of London may have little idea about the imposing building opposite Waterstones’ flagship Gower Street store.

That might be expected for a research library devoted largely to antiquity and the Renaissance – whose stacks are not open to the general public. Yet the Warburg was not always so isolated, said Professor Sherman, a former director of research and collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum. “Until the 1950s, the Warburg always had exhibitions. But when it finally designed its own building, there was nowhere to show anything,” he said.

That will change in October, when the Warburg opens a new exhibition space – taking the area occupied by a suite of ground-floor offices – following a £14.5 million refurbishment, which has also seen the library remodelled and expanded. “Places need renewal or they disappear – it’s one of the things Aby Warburg was interested in,” said Professor Sherman.

Plans for the renovation were under way when the US-born literature scholar took over as director in 2017, with the University of London committing £9.5 million. Yet Professor Sherman believed a larger project could make the Warburg more accessible, and he has since raised £6 million in charitable donations towards this end. Poignantly, two-thirds came from Germany – including a £3 million gift from the foundation of industrialist Hermann-Hinrich Reemtsma, whose family lived next to the Warburgs in Hamburg in the 1920s.

“With some expansion and renewal, the institution’s mission can be more important than ever,” said Professor Sherman, who believes the “Warburg Renaissance” will also raise the profile of London’s School of Advanced Study, of which it has been a part since 1994.

Opening a smart new public space might not seem the most radical of moves, yet not everyone sees this connectivity as a key mission of the Warburg, with fierce battles fought by its supporters over what it stands for and its independence.

That stems from the library’s singular collection, which, divided into 22,000 categories, spans everything from the mainstream (philosophy, history of medicine) to the eccentric and esoteric (astrology, sorcery, necromancy), with two bookcases dedicated to “monsters” alone. Many of those who revel in the study of these abstruse topics have not been overly concerned with connecting with mass audiences.

This tension between purists and modernisers has proved tricky terrain for previous Warburg directors to navigate, but Professor Sherman said the renovation has proved a useful moment to reflect on the institute’s mission.

“There has been a fear among some scholars that this enterprise had run its course – for instance, not everyone learns Latin at school – so we had to think about what we did here,” he said. “Why did we require those on our MA to have working Latin when we could ask them to learn it? Since we’ve made that change, we have 40 MA students, not just a handful,” he said.

Embracing discussions about the politics of culture or how library and museum collections have been assembled has also been key to attracting postgraduates, Professor Sherman said of the Warburg’s broader renewal in recent years.

“It’s been on a century-long journey from a private enterprise to a public institution – it was an entirely privately funded obsession of one very wealthy individual. We have an obligation to be independent, but we’re also doing things differently.

“It’s not about dumbing down – it’s about sharing what is alive and visionary about this place.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com