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  • The exhibition features over eighty incomplete artifacts from various global cultures, highlighting the distinct beauty of fragments separate from their original wholes.
  • Displays categorize damage by cause, including political iconoclasm, colonial looting, war, and natural disasters such as flooding.
  • The show aims to shift viewer focus toward specific details that might otherwise be overlooked in intact sculptures or statues.

A new exhibition currently on display at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence challenges traditional museum narratives by centering on broken, degraded, and incomplete artworks. Titled 'Broken: The Power of the Fragment,' the showcase presents more than eighty artifacts spanning approximately four and a half millennia. Rather than lamenting the loss of original forms, curators from the National Gallery of Art and the Palazzo Strozzi intend to examine the circumstances surrounding each piece’s destruction or fragmentary creation. The exhibition seeks to isolate the observable beauty inherent in these remnants, arguing that fragmentation forces a different mode of engagement with historical objects.

C. D. Dickerson III, a Renaissance and Baroque art expert at the National Gallery of Art, notes that fragments direct attention to minute details that might be lost in larger compositions. For instance, a limestone fragment depicting the nose and lips of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten allows viewers to appreciate the crisp carving of the lip without distraction from other facial features. This piece, dating to around 1350 B.C.E., was discovered in an ancient rubbish deposit near the Nile. Its inclusion underscores the curatorial goal of revealing how partial remains can possess a distinct aesthetic and emotional resonance that differs significantly from their intact predecessors.

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The exhibition is organized thematically to explore the diverse causes of artistic degradation. One section focuses on the evocative power of fragments, featuring ancient heads and parts of sculptures from Italy, Greece, and Vietnam. Another area highlights the political motivations behind destruction. A prominent example is a bronze leg from an equestrian statue of a Greek king, originally located in Athens’ Agora. This statue was toppled and discarded around 200 B.C.E., representing one of the earliest documented instances of politically motivated iconoclasm. Curators explain that destroying images of former rulers was a common practice during regime changes, driven by beliefs that such images contained a life force essential to the ruler’s authority.

More recent history is also represented through objects damaged by conflict and ideological shifts. A 1923 modernist bust of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini bears a bullet hole in its forehead, inflicted by partisans after Italy’s liberation in 1945. This artifact illustrates how art can become a target for expressing political dissent or marking the end of an era. Similarly, the exhibition addresses the impact of colonialism and looting, displaying pieces like a fragment of an Egyptian sarcophagus face that may have been stolen by tomb raiders in antiquity. These items serve as tangible evidence of the exploitation and displacement associated with historical power imbalances.

Natural disasters and environmental factors constitute another significant category of damage featured in the show. A neo-Hittite sculpture of a woman, excavated in Syria and dating back three thousand years, was destroyed by bombs during World War II. Visitors can observe the mortar used to reassemble hundreds of fragments in the 2000s, highlighting the labor-intensive nature of restoration. Additionally, the exhibition includes artifacts damaged by water, such as a first-century B.C.E. sculpture recovered from an ancient Greek trading vessel and a fourteenth-century Tuscan sculpture of Christ marred by the floods that devastated Florence in 1966.

Arturo Galansino, director of the Palazzo Strozzi, connected the inclusion of flood-damaged works to contemporary concerns about climate change. With the exhibition opening in the sixtieth anniversary year of the 1966 floods, the curators aimed to explore how sculptures are challenged by environmental problems. This thematic link bridges historical preservation issues with modern ecological anxieties, suggesting that the vulnerability of art to natural forces remains a pressing concern. The display thus functions not only as a retrospective on past damages but also as a commentary on current threats to cultural heritage.

The final section of the exhibition celebrates the cultural power of missing pieces, featuring sculptures whose fragmentation is integral to their identity. This includes a hand with a pointing finger associated with the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, described by Dickerson as a canonical fragment. Also displayed is a 1533 clay model by Michelangelo depicting a woman without a head or arms. Some scholars suggest Michelangelo may have been inspired by broken Classical statues like the Belvedere Torso, intentionally creating works that embraced incompleteness. This section posits that fragmentation can be an artistic choice rather than merely an accident of history.

Following its run in Florence, the exhibition will travel to Washington, D.C., for a premiere at the National Gallery of Art in March 2027. This collaboration marks the third major joint effort between the two institutions, following previous shows on Hellenistic bronzes and the sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. Dickerson described the concept as groundbreaking because it deviates from standard exhibitions that typically focus on a single artist or geographic location. By aggregating fragments from diverse periods and cultures, the show offers a unique perspective on how brokenness shapes our understanding of art history.

The presentation invites visitors to reconsider the value placed on wholeness in artistic appraisal. While traditional museums often prioritize complete works, this exhibition argues that fragments have frequently survived longer than their original sculptures. The visible scars and absences tell stories of war, politics, nature, and time that intact pieces might obscure. By focusing on what remains rather than what is lost, the curators aim to provide a sober reflection on the resilience and fragility of cultural memory across millennia.

As the exhibition prepares for its transatlantic journey, it offers a structured yet open-ended inquiry into the nature of preservation. The juxtaposition of ancient debris with modern political targets creates a dialogue about continuity and change in human conflict. Whether damaged by deliberate iconoclasm or accidental disaster, these artifacts share a common fate: their survival depends on recognition of their partial state. The show ultimately suggests that understanding the fragment is essential to comprehending the full scope of historical experience.

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  • Smithsonian Magazine↗A New Exhibition Spotlights 4,500 Years of Broken, Shot-Up and Degraded Artworks to Explore the ‘Power of the Fragment’