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The Warburg Institute is indebted to the enormous goodwill of its supporters at home and abroad. Your support enables us to create more opportunities for students and scholars, bolster our libraries and collections and advance the intellectual and architectural transformation of the Institute.

For more than a century, the Warburg Institute has transformed the study of art and history.

Aby Warburg (far right with outstretched hands) asks his four brothers to support the Institute that bears their name. Hamburg, 21 August 1929.

The Institute was founded in Hamburg by the pioneering historian Aby Warburg (1866-1929), the scholarly scion of one of Europe’s great banking families. Warburg set out to find the roots of the Renaissance in ancient culture and ended up changing the way we see the world around us. He created a unique library of books and images which has served—during a turbulent century—as a safe haven and creative crucible for some of the world’s greatest scholars, curators and artists.

The survival of the Institute is only thanks to supporters such as the Warburg family, Samuel Courtauld, and many others; it was exiled to England in 1933 – becoming the only institution saved from Nazi Germany to survive intact in Britain today. It become a permanent part of the University of London in 1944 and has been housed since 1958 in a building designed by Charles Holden, opening onto three of Bloomsbury’s historic squares.

Now entering the exciting next chapter of its existence, the support of our friends, patrons and alumni is as important as ever. We invite you to celebrate one of London’s hidden gems, and ask you to help us build the world’s leading beacon for humanist practice in the digital age.