Broken
The Power of the Fragment in Sculpture

Palazzo Strozzi presents a major exhibition exploring the power that broken sculptures, or fragments, have held for humans across centuries and cultures, from antiquity to the present.

The exhibition—curated by C. D. Dickerson and Andrew Sears and organised in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, where the exhibition will travel in spring 2027—brings together more than ninety works from a wide range of cultural contexts, examining the fragments’ striking beauty as well as the complex histories they embody. The selection spans ancient civilisations from Egypt to Mesoamerica to Etruria to Greece, as well as pre- and early modern cultures from Peru to Cambodia. It also features pioneering modern and contemporary artists who have embraced the fragment as the starting point for new expressive possibilities, such as Auguste Rodin, Alberto Giacometti, Louise Bourgeois, Huma Bhabha, Francesco Vezzoli, and Danh Vo.

While fragments are crucial to our understanding of the past, they are far more than remnants of a lost whole. They exist as objects deserving scrutiny as their own works of art, capable of transcending their original contexts to reveal stories of transformation, interruption, and renewal. Over time their meanings have evolved from symbols of destruction to catalysts for the imagination, generating dynamic and ongoing dialogues between past and present.