Art Arouses Curiosity

Academic and Intellectual Formation 

I am an art historian with a doctorate in history of art and a second degree in philosophy from the University of Hamburg. Erwin Panofsky's iconography and Aby Warburg's iconology as methods of art and architectural analysis strongly shaped my academic education and established my understanding of the artwork within the cultural context of its creation. I learned to "visually precept" and to "judge," to question critically and to differentiate. Over time, my interest increasingly extended beyond the visible image itself toward the cultural, symbolic, and epistemic structures manifested in images, spaces, and societal formations.

Practical experience and professional aktivities in museums, art galleries, and the art market, as well as many years of professional work in academia as a research associate, editor, author, lecturer, and project manager, taught me to maintain both a holistic and detail-oriented perspective on artworks and architecture. Since 2020, I have been Professor and have pursued an interdisciplinary approach in research and teaching that connects art, cultural analysis, perception and creativity research, as well as ethical and societal questions of transformation.

The line, the shadow, the brushstroke, the transition or absence of contour – all these elements taught me to understand art not merely as a formal phenomenon, but also as an expression of perception, thought, and cultural experience. My curiosity about the cognitive processes involved in viewing and producing art led me to investigate creative processes in human thought and action also from a biological perspective. A training seminar in neuroscience at the Medical Faculty of the University of Hamburg, as well as numerous conversations with colleagues in the neurosciences at the Columbia University, New York City, further deepened this interest. These interdisciplinary perspectives expanded my art-historical approach toward questions of embodied cognition, art psychology, and the interrelations between perception, corporeality, emotion, and creativity.

Today, I understand the artwork not only as embedded within its cultural background, but also as an expression and result of complex processes of thought and emotion, in which human physiology cannot be excluded. Questions of abstraction are simultaneously questions of the senses. From this perspective, my current research developed at the intersections of art, cultural memory, ethics, perception, and technological transformation. I am particularly interested in the conditions under which cultural, technological, and institutional systems shape and transform perception, judgment, and agency.

In 2025, I founded ethonoma.Research institute for ethics, culture & science, an independent interdisciplinary research institute dedicated to the study of ethical, cultural, and epistemic transformations in contemporary societies. The institute combines philosophical reflection, cultural analysis, and art-practical, theoretical and historical research with questions of technological, societal, and ecological responsibility.

At the center of my work lies the conviction that aesthetic and cultural practices are not merely expressions of societal processes, but autonomous forms of knowledge production capable of opening new perspectives on memory, responsibility, and future societal developments.

Professional Experience

2001 Doctorate in Art History at the University of Hamburg (mcl)

2001-2004 Visiting and assistant professor at the Institute for Art History, A. Mickiewicz University, Poznan 

2005-2006 Fellow of the Aby Warburg Foundation, co-editor of Aby Warburg's Collected Writings; teaching fellow   at the Institute for Art History and Institute for Philosophy in Hamburg

2006-2007 Project leader "In the Shadow of Berlin and Warsaw" on Central and East-European aristocratic estates, in collaboration with Prof. T. Zuchowski (A. Mickiewicz University, Poznan); associate lecturer University of Hamburg; co-editor "Aby Warburg Collected Works". 

2007-2014 Research fellow,, associate lecturer at the Institute for Art History in Hamburg; researcher and author of the monograph on Aby Warburg's theory of image memory; researcher and leader in the project on aristocratic estates and residencies in Central and Eastern Europe; fellow of the German Forum for Art History, Paris; fellow of the Italian Academy, Columbia University, New York City; winner of the Aby Warburg Award for young scholars of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg) 

2014-2018 Research fellow of the international research group "Bilderfahrzeuge. Aby Warburg's Legacy and the Future of Iconology" at the Warburg Institute, London, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Berlin, delegated by the University of Hamburg); head of the research project on tapestries (Early-Renaissance to present); co-curator of the exhibition "Metadata. How we relate to images ", Lethaby Gallery, London

Since July 2018 acting as an independent art historian, art consultant and artist agent, gallerist.

November 2018 founder and Director of the Company Dr. Woldt Art Consulting Ltd., based in London.

6 March 2019, opening of the online platform www.woldtgallery.com for WOLDT GALLERY. Founding of an art gallery for modern and contemporary art, based in London. 

September 2020-November 2022 Acting Chair Professor for Art Theory and Artistic Practice at the MSH Medical School Hamburg, University of Applied Sciences and Medical University, Faculty of Art, Health and Social Science.

Since November 2022 appointed Chair Professor for Art Theory and Artistic Practice (Focus on Ethics) at the MSH Medical School Hamburg, University of Applied Sciences and Medical University. 

June 2022 expansion and opening WOLDT London & Hamburg exhibition and sales space in Hamburg on Jungfernstieg 26-28, Hamburger Hof Passage. /Business development by Hamburg Kreativ Gesellschaft./

Since 2025 Founding and Developing a new research institute, ethonoma.Research institute for ethics, culture & science. The research institute is an independent interdisciplinary research organisation dedicated to ethical, cultural, and technological transformations in contemporary societies. Combining philosophical reflection, cultural analysis, art-practical, historical and theoretical research, the institute explores new perspectives on responsibility, creativity, and societal change. www.ethonoma.com/ethonoma-research