Archive | December, 2019
Department of Art History alumna Caroline Fowler (B.A. Art History, ‘05, Ph.D. Princeton, History of Art) to lead the Clark Art Institute’s Research and Academic Program
17 DecCongratulations to John Hopkins!
4 Dec
We are thrilled to announce that Professor John Hopkins who joined the DAH in September, 2018 has been granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor effective January 1, 2020.
Silsila fall 2019 Lecture Series, Bonded
2 Dec
Helmet with Seated Male Figure
19th century
Mali; Bamana peoples
H: 27 ½ in.
Coll. of James J. and Laura Ross, New York
“FROM BITON KULUBALI TO EL HAJI UMAR TAL: THE RISE & FALL OF THE BAMANA EMPIRE OF SEGU”
Alisa LaGamma, Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Bamana Segu Empire traded vanquished neighbors to both the Saharan and Atlantic slave trade networks until they were themselves conquered by the jihad of El Hadjj Umar Tall. Launched in 1860, Tal’s campaign for control of the Niger Valley has been described as a “crusade to destroy the offensive temples of infidelity (Robinson 1985: 323).” Its principal target was the Bamana states whose practices as unbelievers were epitomized by Segu and its capital is characterized as a “citadel of paganism.” At that time the gold and wood religious paraphernalia and great sculptures from the state shrine used in annual rites relating to Segu’s eighteenth-century founding were confiscated. A few decades later these would be among the spoils of war sent back to France with the invasion of Segu by Colonel Archinard in 1892.
Alisa LaGamma is the Ceil and Michael E. Pulitzer Curator in Charge of the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her work over the last twenty-five years expanding the scope of its collection and developing a dozen influential exhibitions has been instrumental in historicizing and repositioning sub-Saharan African art and culture. In 2012 the Bard Graduate Center recognized this with the Iris Award for Outstanding Scholarship. Among her most recent projects, Kongo: Majesty and Power received critical acclaim and its publication has been recognized by the George Wittenborn Memorial Award, the International Tribal Art Book Prize, Honorable Mention for the PROSE Award, and finalist for the College Art Association’s Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award. She is currently overseeing plans to renovate the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing and in January will launch the exhibition “Sahel: Art and Empire on the Shores of the Sahara.”
Date: Tuesday, Dec 10th
Time: 6:30-8:30pm
Location: 4 Washington Square North, 2nd floor
Time: 6:30-8:30pm
Location: 4 Washington Square North, 2nd floor
RSVP here: https://forms.gle/J4hjZrat2aWMJcN1A
*Since space is limited, it is essential to RSVP. If for any reason you have rsvp’d and cannot attend, please use the RSVP form to let us know.
CITIES WORKSHOP 4: SHIRAZ
2 Dec
Situated in Fars, a region of Iran rich in historical memories and monuments, the city of Shiraz has been a crucial nexus between maritime and terrestrial contacts between the central Islamic lands, the Gulf and the Indian Ocean since long before the advent of Islam. From architecture to painting and calligraphy, the renown of the city and its artistry was reflected in the mobility of artisans and artifacts across the Islamic lands. Fragments of these histories are scattered across learned articles and monographs, but a more holistic vision of the city and its role in material and social networks extending far beyond Fars remains elusive. This workshop brings together a range of international scholars who will present aspects of the city’s history and the resonances of its material culture from the pre-Islamic period through its transformation in modernity.
9.45-10.00 Introduction, Finbarr Barry Flood, Silsila/NYU
10-11.00 Simon Rettig, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution: Behind the Name: Shirazi Manuscripts from the Injus to the Qajars.
11.00-11.30 Coffee
11.30-12.30 Renata Holod, University of Pennsylvania: The Penn Museum Nizami (NEP 33): An Illustrated Book Made for Art Market.
12.30-1.30 Lunch
1.30-2.30 Yves Porter, Aix-Marseille University: Shirazis in Indian Sultanates (14th-16th c.): Impact and Response.
2.30-3.30 Eloïse Brac de la Perrière, Sorbonne University: A Touch of Shiraz? Shirazi Influences on pre-Mughal Painting. A Review.
3.30-4.00 Tea
4.00-5.00 Talinn Grigor, UC Davis: The Return of Persepolis to Shiraz, 1771-1971
5.00-6.00 Setrag Manoukian, McGill University: Technology and Subjectivity in the Making of Modern Shiraz
Eloïse Brac de la Perrière is Associate Professor of Islamic Art History at the Sorbonne University. She recently headed an international research program devoted to Kalīla wa Dimna‘s manuscript paintings with the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Most of her research focuses on the book art in Sultanate India to which she has devoted several publications, the most recent of which is a collective work entitled Le Coran de Gwalior. Polysémie d’un manuscrit à peintures (edited with M. Buresi).
Talinn Grigor is a professor of art history in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of California, Davis. Her research concentrates on the ties between architecture and postcolonial theory, focused on Iran and Parsi India. Her books include Building Iran: Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage under the Pahlavi Monarchs (2009) and Contemporary Iranian Art: From the Street to the Studio (2014).
Renata Holod is College of Women Class of 1963 Professor in the Humanities, History of Art Department, and Curator, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, at the University of Pennsylvania. She has carried out archeological and architectural fieldwork in Syria, Iran, Morocco, Turkey, Central Asia, Tunisia, and Ukraine. She served as the Convenor, Steering Committee Member and Master Jury Chair of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. She is co-author and co-editor of City in the Desert (1978); Architecture and Community: Building in the Islamic World Today, Aperture, New York, (1983); The Mosque and the Modern World (1997); An Island Through Time: Jerba Studies (2009) and The City in the Islamic World (2008).
Setrag Manoukian is an Italian anthropologist interested in knowledge and its relationship with power, understood both as existential and social force. His area of specialty is Iran. He teaches at McGill University at the Institute of Islamic Studies and the Department of Anthropology, which he currently chairs. He is the author of City of Knowledge in Twentieth Century Iran: Shiraz, History, Poetry (Routledge 2012).
Yves Porter teaches Islamic Arts at Aix-Marseille University; since 2018, he is part of Institut Universitaire de France. He has published numerous papers and books on Iranian and Indian arts and crafts and is internationally invited for talks and conferences on these matters.
Simon Rettig is Assistant Curator for the Arts of the Islamic world at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C. A specialist of the arts of the book, he has curated several exhibitions, such as Nasta‘liq: The Genius of Persian Calligraphy and The Art of the Qur’an: Treasures of the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts. Rettig’s current projects include an exhibition on the Great Mongol Shahnama (opening late 2020) and a monograph on the Freer Khusraw u Shirin.
Date: Friday, Dec 6th
Time: 9:30-6:00pm
Location: 4 Washington Square North, 2nd floor
RSVP here: https://forms.gle/j2vkM7kokcQzwu7AA
*Since space is limited, it is essential to RSVP. If for any reason you have rsvp’d and cannot attend, please use the RSVP form to let us know.
Silsila: Center for Material Histories is an NYU center dedicated to material histories of the Islamicate world. Each semester we hold a thematic series of lectures and workshops, which are open to the public. Details of the Center can be found at:
http://as.nyu.edu/content/nyu-as/as/research-centers/silsila.html
Exhibition Walkthrough with Conversation
2 Dec
Kamran Diba
Diver, 1967
Oil on canvas, 80 3/4 x 34 1/4 in.
Grey Art Gallery, New York University Art Collection
Gift of Abby Weed Grey, G1975.86
Thursday, December 5, 6:30 pm
Grey Art Gallery, NYU,
100 Washington Square East
With Talinn Grigor, Professor of Art History, Contemporary Global Architecture and Art Critical and (post)Colonial Theory, University of California, Davis, who will focus on Iranian art.
Free of charge, no reservations. All programs subject to change.
Offered in conjunction with Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection, on view at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 100 Washington Square East, NYC, September 10–December 7, 2019.
For information on the exhibition, please visit greyartgallery.nyu.edu
Fields of Vision 