Arnold Witte, associate professor at Cultural Studies, will be dispatched to Rome for the coming years. Here he will be responsible, as a Staff member, for the Art and Cultural History of the KNIR institute. He will provide courses – especially for MA and PhD students – about specific themes of art and culture and will give advice to researchers and students about research in Roman libraries and archives. In addition he will conduct his own research on Italian themes. Both in his research as in his teaching at the KNIR, Arnold Witte will work on themes he previously worked with. On one hand, the patronage of cardinals in the Early Modern Period, on the other hand the role played by contemporary private parties, especially companies, in the world of modern art – Corporate Art Collecting. In both cases the key is commissioning and collecting, as parts of strategic considerations and institutional contexts. Art is seen in this context as a means to communicate directly and indirectly about the values of the concerning organisations. One of the areas Arnold Witte wants to generate more attention for is the Post War Italian art. Italy was in this period, with its galleries in Turin and Rome, a junction for the international artistic scene. Moreover, there is increasing attention for Italian artist that reached international fame and are now seen as fundamentally important for the art tradition, such as Lucio Fontana and Giuseppe Penone, whose work is also represented in important Dutch museum collections.