Ada
Lombardi

Ada Lombardi is a lecturer and historian of contemporary art who specialises in the connections between Western and Eastern art, with a particular focus on cultural exchanges between Europe, America, Japan and China. She currently teaches History of Contemporary Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome.
She graduated in Modern Literature from the Sapienza University of Rome in 1987 and obtained an MA in the History of Contemporary Art from the University of Siena in 1990. After holding academic positions at various institutions, including the Academies of Fine Arts in Sassari, Naples, Bologna and Frosinone, she has been a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome since 2009.
Ada Lombardi is renowned for her research on the influences of Japanese art on post-war Western art and the role that these exchanges played in the development of new artistic languages, such as Conceptual, Environmental, Performance and Video Art, in the 1960s and 1970s. She has curated major international exhibitions and published several books, including Arte Contemporanea – Oriente e Occidente, 1945 ad oggi and Contemporary Art – Eastern and Western.
She has held prominent institutional positions, including serving as director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Crotone and curating the Pinacoteca di Capo d’Orlando and Isu Zo Ne Fine Art in Malaysia. She has also collaborated with leading art magazines such as Flash Art and Segno, and has organised numerous lecture series on topics related to contemporary art and intercultural influences.
Her research activities continue to explore the dialogue between East and West, promoting a global perspective on contemporary art and its cultural impact.

The programme of the History of Contemporary Art course for the 2024/2025 academic year is structured as a research workshop focusing on the topic of contemporary art in relation to the environment, with the aim of exploring the role of art in raising awareness of environmental issues. The structure of the lectures promotes a practical, interactive approach focused on individual and group research, actively engaging students in the learning process.
The course aims to transform the classroom into a research workshop on contemporary art and its relationship with the environment. Each student is required to develop their analytical and critical skills by addressing a specific topic related to the interplay between art and environmental sustainability. The dedicated website, Art and Environment, constitutes the digital hub of the project, where the final articles will be published and where the interactions between sustainable artistic practices and global ecological issues will be explored.
Each student will be required to select a broad topic from those proposed, ranging from art exhibitions to conferences and corporate initiatives related to the environment, and then conduct in-depth research.
Following their research, students will write a one-page article, accompanied by relevant images. The article will then be presented to the class during a dedicated lesson, where students will discuss their work and receive feedback from the lecturer and their peers.
Once the suggestions and corrections have been received, the article will undergo a final review and then be published on the project website.
The final assessment will be based on active participation, the quality of the research carried out, writing skills, and the level of engagement demonstrated during the review and discussion sessions. The entire course is designed as a progressive learning process, culminating in the online publication of the students’ work.

Students will be free to choose the texts they consult for the purposes of building the website and publishing their articles, as part of their active research.
The lecturer will recommend texts on art and the environment from time to time during lectures.

For a general understanding of the history of contemporary art, we recommend freely consulting:
Lombardi, Ada, Arte Contemporanea, Oriente/Occidente – dal 1945 ad oggi, Cuepress, 2019