Broken: The Power of the Fragment

A broken sculpture carries traces of what happened to it. At Palazzo Strozzi, Broken: The Power of the Fragment examines how damaged and incomplete works have held viewers’ attention across cultures and centuries, inviting them to imagine the missing whole or consider the fragment on its own terms.

Organized with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the exhibition follows the forces that alter sculpture, including war and iconoclasm. It also examines the artistic possibilities of incompleteness, extending to works conceived as fragments from the outset. Across this history, a surviving piece can preserve evidence of destruction while taking on a new life as an artwork.