“SLAVES AND MATERIAL CULTURE IN THE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN MEDITERRANEAN”
M’hamed Oualdi, Sciences Po-Paris Lamia Balafrej, UCLA Meredith Martin, NYU
Wednesday, May 4th, 12:30pm ET
[Online] Silsila Spring 2022 Series
(Left) A detail from a talisman that can be seen in the Inquisition Museum in Birgu (copied from the Archives of Inquisition of Malta, vol. 136B, case 88, f. 568A, late 18th century)
(Right) “Beaker Water-Clock of the Calligrapher,” illustrated folio from a copy of al-Jami‘ bayn al-‘ilm wa al-‘amal al-nafi‘ fi sina‘at al-hiyal (A Compendium on the theory and practice of the mechanical arts) of Ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari, dated 602/1206, Anatolia. Istanbul, TSMK, Ahmet III 3473.
Two talks discussing conceptions, practices and the material culture of slavery in the medieval and early modern Mediterranean, followed by a discussion mediated by Meredith Martin, NYU. 12.30-12.45 Introduction, Finbarr Barry Flood, Silsila/NYU & Meredith Martin, NYU12.45-1.15 Lamia Balafrej, UCLA, “Unfreedom, Instrumentality, and the Arts in the Medieval Mediterranean.”1.15-1.45 M’hamed Oualdi, Sciences Po-Paris, “Letters, Papers and Talismans. Literacy among the Last Enslaved North Africans in Mediterranean Europe (mid-18th century – 1820s)“1.45-2.30 Questions and Discussion – Moderated by Meredith MartinPaper abstracts and further details. Lamia Balafrej is associate professor of the Arts of the Islamic World at UCLA. Her current research explores the intersected histories of art, embodiment, technology, and unfreedom in the medieval and early modern Mediterranean. In her first book, The Making of the Artist in Late Timurid Painting (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), she examined the work of visual intricacy in Persian painting and its link to artistic self-reflection.
M’hamed Oualdi is professor of Early Modern and Modern History of North Africa at Sciences Po-Paris. He is the author of A Slave Between Empires. A Transimperial History of North Africa (Columbia University Press) winner of the 2021 Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize, from the French Colonial Historical Society for the best book in French colonial history. He is currently supervising a European Research Council funded project about the demise of slavery in North Africa and the western Mediterranean from the mid-18th century to the 1930s building on ego-documents written or conceived by European, African slaves in the Maghreb and North African slaves in Europe.
Meredith Martin is associate professor of Art History at NYU and the Institute of Fine Arts and a founding editor of Journal18. A specialist in early modern French art and architecture, she is the co-author (with Gillian Weiss) of The Sun King at Sea: Maritime Art and Gallery Slavery in Louis XIV’s France (Getty Research Institute Publications, 2022). She is also the author of Dairy Queens: The Politics of Pastoral Architecture from Catherine de’ Medici to Marie-Antoinette (Harvard University Press, 2011), and a co-author of Meltdown: Picturing the World’s First Bubble Economy (Harvey Miller/Brepols, 2020), which is related to an exhibition that she co-curated on the 1720 Mississippi and South Sea bubbles for The New York Public Library. Together with the choreographer and activist Phil Chan, Martin has reimagined and restaged a lost French ballet from 1739 known as the Ballet des Porcelaines, or The Teapot Prince, which will tour the U.S. and Europe in 2022. Date: Wednesday, May 4th Time: 12:30-2:30pm Location: Online This event will take place as a live Webinar at 12:30pm ET (New York time). To register as an attendee, please use the following link: https://nyu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_H67FmE96S62R4XUtE458Zw Only registered attendees will be able to access this event.
The response to our call for alumni news this spring was tremendous! Great thanks to all of you for taking the time to write in despite the ongoing challenges of the pandemic. Hearty and heartfelt congratulations on all of your achievements, activities, and milestones. We hope that all of you and your loved ones remain well and are staying safe, and we hope to hear from more of you for our next “Alumni News” round-up, which we’ll post sometime in fall, 2022. Great thanks go to departmental faculty Mosette Broderick, Dennis Geronimus, Carol Krinsky, and Jon Ritter for their contributions to this blogpost, and to our Administrative Aide Ozana Plemenitash and Manager Peggy Coon for assistance putting it together.
Phil Tajitsu Nash (B.A. Urban Design & Architecture Studies ‘78; J.D. Rutgers School of Law–Newark) has been teaching Asian Pacific American History, Art, and Public Policy classes at the University of Maryland, College Park since 1996. In honor of Professor Carol Krinsky’s “Cities in History” course, he created a DC– Chinatown tour that allows him to teach redevelopment history and architectural highlights in the classroom, followed by a walking tour that ends in one of the few remaining non-franchise Chinatown restaurants. Here is more about Nash’s research, publications, and other activities.
Valerie Mercer (B.A. Fine Arts, German minor ’79; M.A. Fine Arts, Harvard University) was recently the subject of an NYU Alumni profile and interview in “NYU Alumni & Friends Connect.” Among her many achievements in her remarkable career, Mercer is the inaugural Curator of the General Motors Center for African American Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), a position to which she was appointed two decades ago. Previously, she had been a curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem, an adjunct professor at The City College of New York, and a visiting lecturer at The Rhode Island School of Design. In the interview Mercer singles out for mention the courses in the Department of Art History (then, the Department of Fine Arts) that particular “excited” her, including lectures by Professors Carol Krinsky and the late Robert Rosenblum. To learn more about Mercer’s career and her role as a “champion of Black art and artists,” look here.
Valerie Mercer
On April 22, 2022 Olenka Z. Pevny (B.A. Fine Arts ‘85; M.A., Ph.D. Institute of Fine Arts ‘95) delivered a lecture on “Lacunae of Art History and Kyiv’s Visual Culture.” Dr. Pevny’s presentation was the inaugural lecture in the Virtual Lecture and Conversation Series, “From Kyivan Rus’ to Modern Ukraine: Virtual Conversations on History, Art, and Cultural Heritage,” which is co-sponsored by North of Byzantium, Dumbarton Oaks, and Connected Central European Worlds, 1500-1700 (University of Kent). Pevny is a College Lecturer in Slavonic Studies in Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge. Previously she was Associate Professor of Byzantine and Medieval Art and served as Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Richmond, Virginia. Pevny also contributed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s acclaimed 1997 exhibition, The Glory of Byzantium. As she puts it on her webpage, Pevny “studies the role of visual culture as a locus of expression in narratives of communal, regional, national, religious, class and gender identity… she has explored the reception and acculturation of the Orthodox visual tradition in Eastern Slavic lands, particularly in Kyivan Rus’, Ruthenia, the late Russian Empire, and Soviet and contemporary Ukraine.” For more about Pevny and her research, look here.
Nina Wishnok (B.A. Art History ‘89; M.A. Graphic Design, Massachusetts College of Art and Design ‘95), after over a decade designing at the MIT Media Lab, has founded a new creative collective: N of Many. Also a practicing printmaker, Nina celebrates a year of partnership with the Bromfield Gallery in Boston’s SoWa arts district with a solo show, “Things are Getting Dark,” running from May 4–29, 2022.
Elizabeth Dospěl Williams (B.A. Art History/Romance Languages ‘04; M.A., Ph.D., Institute of Fine Arts ‘15), who is Associate Curator at Dumbarton Oaks (Washington DC) responsible for their Byzantine collections, presented a paper via Zoom on January 18, 2022 titled “The Lives of Things: Hoarding Jewelry in the Early Medieval Eastern Mediterranean.” Her talk was part of the winter 2021/2022 Byzantium in Mainz & Frankfurt lecture series. For more about Dospěl Williams’s work, including her research, publications, and curatorial initiatives and responsibilities, go here.
Christian J. Zaino, M.D. (B.A. Urban Design & Architecture Studies ‘06; MED ’10) became a partner at the Orthopedic Institute of New Jersey on January 1, 2022. Two weeks later, on January 11, he and his wife Joanna Rose welcomed Alessio Joseph into the world. Alessio loves architecture and reading The Triumphal Arch, a book by Peter Howell of NYU London with his dad.
Alessio Joseph ZainoChristian and Alessio Joseph Zaino
Marci Kwon (B.A. Art History ‘07; Ph.D. Institute of Fine Arts ‘16), who is Assistant Professor of Art and Art History at Stanford University, will participate in “The Future of Asian American Art History: A Conversation with Marci Kwon and Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander.” The event is sponsored by IFA Contemporary Asia, and will be livestreamed on Tuesday, May 3rd at 6:00 PM (for more information, go here). Kwon and Alexander co-direct the Asian American Art Initiative of the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford. Kwon’s first book, Enchantments: Joseph Cornell and American Modernism, was published by Princeton University Press in 2021. For more information about Marci’s research, publications, and projects, go here.
Kaitlin Booher (B.A. Art History, ‘08; Ph.D. candidate, Art History, Rutgers University) sends this news: “I am delighted to share that in March 2022, I joined the Museum of Modern Art as the Beaumont and Nancy Newhall Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Photography. I am also in the process of completing my dissertation about the history of fashion photography at Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue between 1929 and 1968. Additionally, an exhibition that I co-organized for the Ryerson Image Centre in Toronto will open in January 2023. Titled Mary Ellen Mark: Ward 81, the show is an in-depth look at Mark’s 1976 project photographing women living in a locked psychiatric facility. My essay for the accompanying book, which will be published by Steidl this spring, explores Ward 81 within the broader historical context of mental healthcare and photography.”
Sarah Rogers Morris (B.A. Art History ’08; M.A. History of Design, Decorative Arts, and Material Culture, Bard Graduate Center ‘13), who is pursuing a Ph.D. in Art History at the University of Illinois Chicago, was recently named as a Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellow. This twelve-month appointment, which begins in June, will support her dissertation research at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and National Museum of American History (NMAH). Her project, “Photographic Infrastructures: The Framing of American Architectural Photography, 1890 – 1940,” revises the history of American architectural photography by revealing a genealogy of colonial encounters framed by cameras and classrooms. Through a series of global case studies, the dissertation investigates the place of visual instruction (the use of images as didactic tools) in a growing movement to expand access to public education, instill feelings of national belonging, and grow the world economy. It situates photographic surveys of infrastructure created for school children and sponsored by imperial, state, and commercial actors between 1890 and 1940 in a transnational history of empire formation. The Smithsonian’s collection of photographs published by the Keystone View Company is central to Sarah’s research. As she puts it on her webpage, Sarah “studies photography and architectural modernism within an international frame.” For more about Sarah’s research and projects, go here.
Sarah Colacino (B.A. Urban Design & Architecture Studies/Music ‘09; M.Arch. City College of New York ‘12) sends this news: “I am an architect at Korb and Associates in Milwaukee, WI. My husband Isaac (also NYU ’09) and I moved our family to Milwaukee in 2019 after six years living in the DC area. I had the privilege of working on Ascent, the tallest timber tower in the world (as of this writing), and recently attended the topping out ceremony where I stood on the very top of the timber roof to take in the beautiful Lake Michigan view. We have a 4 ½-year-old son Ezra, and our daughter Ruby was born July 19, 2021.”
Sarah ColacinoEzra and Ruby
In December 2021 Alexis Wang (B.A. Art History ‘09; Ph.D. Columbia University ‘22) successfully defended her doctoral dissertation,“Intermedial Effects, Sanctified Surfaces: Framing Devotional Objects in Italian Medieval Mural Decoration,” written under the supervision of Professor Holger Klein of Columbia’s Department of Art History & Archaeology. Dr. Wang’s doctoral research was supported by fellowships from the American Academy in Rome and the Metropolitan Museum of Art; to learn more about her dissertation go here. She has presented several talks related to her dissertation, including “Transfiguring Frescoes: Framing Panel Paintings in Italian Medieval Mural Decoration” at the56th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo MI (May, 2021); “The Embedded Image in Medieval Italy” in The Pre-Modern Art History: New Approaches Lecture Seriessponsored by Binghamton University (March, 2022) and “Mirrors, Rainbows, and the Aesthetics of Reflection in the Arena Chapel, Padua” in the NYC Inter-University Doctoral Consortium organized by Fordham University’s Center for Medieval Studies (April, 2022). Her undergraduate honors thesis, written under the supervision of Professor Kathryn Smith, was a co-winner of the 2009 Borgman thesis prize. Along with Malcolm St. Clair (B.A. Urban Design & Architecture Studies ‘09), Alexis co-founded the department’s journal of undergraduate research, Ink & Image.
Ashley Tan (B.A. Urban Design and Architecture Studies ‘12; J.D. Boston University School of Law ‘15) was appointed as an Associate Member of the Planning Board for the City of Cambridge, one of the largest municipalities in Massachusetts, last fall. In her day job, she is a real estate attorney.
Anabel Wold (B.A. Art History ‘12) sends this news: “Formerly the Associate Director at 303 Gallery, New York, in May 2021 I accepted a new position as Photographs Specialist, Artnet Auctions & Private Sales, at Artnet in New York.” Contact: awold@artnet.com
Riad Kherdeen (B.A. Art History, Chemistry minor ‘13; M.A. Institute of Fine Arts ‘16; Ph.D. candidate History of Art, University of California, Berkeley)sends this news: “After having spent over a year and a half in Morocco for fieldwork research on my dissertation, “Spectral Modernisms: Decolonial Aesthetics and Haunting in the Aftershock of Morocco’s Agadir Earthquake (1960),” I am now in France completing the final leg of my fieldwork. I am delighted to share that I have just been awarded predoctoral fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Townsend Center for the Humanities (UC Berkeley). I was also a finalist for a CASVA predoctoral fellowship and was named an alternate. Previously, I was a fellow of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS) and UC Berkeley’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Last summer I presented at the Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) triennial conference. I also contributed to the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Surrealism volume, edited by Kirsten Strom, with a chapter on surrealism in the Arab World.” Riad is writing his dissertation under the supervision of Professor Anneka Lenssen in Berkeley’s History of Art Department.
Ariane Prache (B.A. Urban Design & Architecture Studies ’13; M.Arch Historic Preservation/M.S. Conservation, Columbia University GSAPP ‘19) was promoted to Associate at the New York architectural firm Bleyer, Blinder, Belle.
Stephanie Morales (B.A. Environmental Studies/Urban Design & Architecture Studies ‘14) sends this news: “After graduating in 2014 I went to architecture school at the University of Oregon and I now work at Mahlum Architects in Portland, Oregon. In my own time, I also serve as the AIA Oregon Treasurer and am a member of the AIAO Committee on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and the Portland chapter of NOMA (The National Organization of Minority Architects).”
Nora Gorman (B.A. Art History ‘15) is graduating this spring with an MSEd from the Leadership in Museum Education program at Bank Street College of Education. She is currently the Group Sales and Docent Program Coordinator at the New-York Historical Society, a Contractual Educator for Family Programs at The Met Cloisters, and a trustee of the NYC Museum Educators Roundtable.
Elizabeth Meshel (B.A. Urban Design & Architecture Studies ‘15), who is completing her Masters in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of British Columbia, has been awarded a Fulbright scholarship to work with the Balkan Heritage Foundation in Bulgaria for eight months next year. As Elizabeth reports, “I will be researching heritage conservation funding trends to help heritage sites get money for what they and the local community need, rather than what is important to a governing body or external funder with socio-political motives. I will also excavate at one of their sites, visit several of them, and learn from a variety of heritage conservation practitioners.” Meshel wrote an honors thesis under the supervision of Professor Carol Krinsky about the arches of Emperor Septimius Severus.
Savannah Fitzgerald-Brown(B.A. Urban Design & Architecture Studies ’16) will begin the Masters in Urban Planning in CUNY/Hunter’s Graduate Program in Urban Policy and Planning this fall.
Jiawei (Jerry) He (B.A. Urban Design & Architecture Studies/Computer Science ’16; M.Arch. Princeton University ‘20) was awarded a Kornhauser-Gervasio Graduate Fellowship, an endowed fellowship for research on Transportation Engineering, to support his graduate work at Princeton. Jerry recently became the Executive Director of CARTS, which focuses on “human-centered autonomy, new mobility, urban design, and public engagement.” CARTS is located in Princeton and is affiliated with the university. As Jerry reports, “I’m working on the Trenton MOVES project to build the first autonomous vehicle (AV) based urban transit system in America, to provide mobility for all especially the currently underserved through the promising scalability of AV technology.”
Emma Holter (B.A. Art History ‘17) will begin the Ph.D. program in Art History at Temple University this autumn. Emma received full funding and was nominated by Temple’s Department of Art History to receive the prestigious University Fellowship, granted to admitted doctoral students who show a “high degree of potential for future success” in their field. Emma plans to work with Dr. Marcia Hall, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Renaissance Art at Temple and a scholar of Raphael, Michelangelo, and sixteenth-century painting as well technical art history; and Dr. Tracy Cooper, a specialist in the art and architecture of early modern Venice. Emma is currently writing her Master’s thesis at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London under the supervision of Dr. Irene Brooke on (tentative title) “Giovanni Bellini’s Lamentation Over the Dead Christ and the Chiaroscuro Aesthetic in Fifteenth-Century Venice.”
While finishing her M.A. in the History of Art at London’s Courtauld Institute of Art, Sarah Mackay(B.A. Art History ’17) has accepted the position of Assistant Curator for the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; she will move to SF this summer. Her M.A. thesis, “Cellini’s Boys: Benvenuto Cellini and His Rendering of Male Beauty,” is an outgrowth of the honors thesis she wrote in the Department of Art History under the supervision of Professor Dennis Geronimus. While pursuing her Masters degree Sarah authored exhibition reviews for “The Courtauldian”, the Courtauld’s student-run publication, on which she served as a staff writer.
Anastasiya Shelest (B.A. Art History ‘17) is the Assistant Director of Cindy Rucker Gallery (New York), where she has recently curated the exhibition This is not an ideal time, which features works by Ukrainian artists. She is also the founder of ArtAsForm, a project focused on video interviews with contemporary artists.
Julia Drayson (B.A. Art History ‘18) sends this news: “I am still at The Willem de Kooning Foundation where I assist with educational, exhibition and loan initiatives, including the recent Soutine / de Kooning exhibition at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, and then the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. In my spare time I have been a Team Leader and Associate Board Member of Minds Matter NYC, a college access and success program for low-income students. This spring, my eight students will be graduating and heading off to college in the fall—an exciting and bittersweet moment. I highly recommend that recent graduates join the program. It’s a wonderful organization and a great opportunity to meet young professionals and give back to the NYC community. Additionally, I recently came back from a trip to the Tyrol region of Austria and Zurich, Switzerland, where I saw both James Turrell’s Skyspace in Lech-Zürs and Marc Chagall’s vitrines at the Fraumünster Church in Zurich. Both are beautiful, and I suggest that anyone visit if they’re in the area!”
Skyspace Lech by James TurrellMarc Chagall Vitrines at Fraumünster
Anna Filonenko (B.A. Art History ‘18) sends this news: “I organized first projects with my art foundation (StandArt Foundation for Contemporary Arts), including an affordable contemporary Russian art fair (StandArt Pocket Fair) in Saint Petersburg, and an online art auction that was launched in Vladivostok (Art Against Woe). I’m also working with art history students in Saint Petersburg to develop an information resource about contemporary Russian artists (StandArt Magazine). Furthermore, the foundation coordinates the presence of the Animated Ecologies initiative in Russia. I wrote an article about the Yakutian film industry and ecology for them and hope to have my own art, education and filmmaking project in Yakutia this summer. Finally, I began a degree in filmmaking in Moscow and am currently developing several video art and short film projects.”
Rebecca Schiffman (B.A. Art History ‘18) has left Hauser & Wirth and is now the Communications Manager at the Gladstone Gallery where from November 2021 to mid-January 2022 there was an exhibition of work by James Ensor. In addition, Schiffman has enrolled in the M.A. program in Art History at Hunter College, with a view toward studying the work of women Surrealists.
Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez (B.A. Art History ‘18) sends this news: “I am finishing my third year in the Art History Ph.D. program at Stanford. I just recently passed my oral and written exams. I now have the next few months to work on my dissertation proposal. While It’s still taking form and shifting a lot, the dissertation will probably be an environmental history of Fire Island, NY through the works of artists Sanford Robinson Gifford, Alfred Leslie, Paul Thek, and Betty Beaumont. I moved back to New York from California in May, and I am currently writing/editing a book that is an expansion of my undergrad honors thesis on the artists’ magazine Newspaper. The book is a complete reprint of the publication plus an essay. It will be published by Primary Information in early spring 2023. I am also working part-time at the Brooklyn Museum as a research assistant for an upcoming exhibition on the history of zines in North America (opening November 2023).” For more about Marcelo’s research and projects go to www.marcelo-yanez.com and https://art.stanford.edu/people/marcelo-gabriel-y%C3%A1%C3%B1ez.
Carla Burkert (B.A. Art History ‘19) sends this news: “Due to the pandemic I relocated to Cincinnati, Ohio, where I have been working as an Art Specialist at an e-commerce auction house. With the guidance of an amazing supervisor I learned to specialize in prints, from 16th-century maps to contemporary art. So far, I have had the opportunity to catalog and authenticate works by artists such as Matisse, Miró, Diebenkorn, and Hockney. Just a few months ago I received my admissions letter to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Visual and Critical Studies Graduate Program, which I am excited to attend beginning this fall.”
Ladan Jaballas (B.A. Urban Design & Architecture Studies ‘19) has been admitted to the J.D. program at Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.
Olivia McCaughey (B.A. Urban Design & Architecture Studies/Art History ‘20) recently earned her M. in Real Estate Development from Columbia University. In the fall she began working for Housing Works as a Housing Development Associate, helping the organization manage a development pipeline of over 100 units of supportive housing for homeless individuals living with HIV/AIDS.
Niklas Persson (B.A. Urban Design & Architecture Studies ‘20) sends this news: “After I graduated in May 2020, I started a MSc in Urban Management and Development at the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies in Rotterdam, NL. There I wrote a thesis exploring the ways in which the housing conditions of NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority) residents affected their mental health. I graduated in September 2021, and then landed a job working as a Lending Analyst for an affordable housing developer called the Urban Redevelopment Authority in Pittsburgh. I have been working there since January.”
Gabriella (Gabby) Chinea (B.A. Urban Design & Architecture Studies ‘21) sends this news: “Since graduation, I have been working as a Project Coordinator at Central Park Conservancy in the Planning, Design, and Construction department. One of my responsibilities is acting as liaison for the Parks Department, Community Boards, Landmark Preservation Commission, and Public Design Commission for the public review process of any park design changes. I also do photographic documentation of all our construction projects, work with professional photographers and organize our park archive, graphic design for signage in the park and internal staff websites, and project planning. I really am enjoying my position and am thankful for how the Urban Design & Architecture Studies program prepared me.”
Ching-wen Janet Chuang (B.A. Art History ‘21; M.A. candidate, Visual Arts Administration, NYU) is the curator of the COVID memorial and student/faculty art exhibition for the Rory Meyers College of Nursing. Titled When the World Went Still, the exhibition features works of art and photography by Meyers students and alumni and is set to open in the Meyers Building, 433 1st Avenue, in May. Once the exhibition opens, her article on curating the show and installation shots will also be published as a featured article in the NYU Magazine.
Gray Danforth(B.A. Urban Design & Architecture Studies ‘21) will begin the M.A. program in Historic Preservation in Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) this fall.
Hyungjoo Han (B.A. Urban Design & Architecture Studies ‘21) will begin theM.A. program in Historical and Sustainable Architecture at New York University this fall.
Liza Hegedus (B.A. Urban Design & Architecture Studies ’21) will begin the M.Arch. program in Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) this fall.
Mari Otsu(B.A. Art History/Psychology/French/Global Liberal Studies, with a concentration in Arts & Literatures; Studio Art and Child & Adolescent Mental Health Studies minors ‘21) accepted a position at the Smithsonian for the summer as one of their Conservation Interns for Broadening Access (CIBA; look here).
Katie Svensson (B.A. Art History ‘21) will begin the M.A. program at Institute of Fine Arts this coming fall. She will continue the study of the grotesque and the abject in contemporary art, a topic she first examined in a Department of Art History seminar taught by Professor Kathryn Smith and that she studied further in her honors thesis, written under the supervision of Professor Meredith Martin. Since graduating in May of 2021 Katie has been working as a gallery assistant at Hal Bromm Gallery in Tribeca, and as a studio assistant for three artists.
Natalie White (B.A. Urban Design & Architecture Studies ‘21) was awarded a New York University GSAS Master’s College Diversity Scholarship.
Hunter Wolff (B.A.Urban Design & Architecture Studies ‘21) will begin the M.Arch. program in Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) this fall.
“BLOCK-PRINTED AMULETS FROM THE QUBBAT AL-KHAZNA IN DAMASCUS: DISCOVERY, TECHNIQUE AND TEXTS”
Arianna D’Ottone Rambach, La Sapienza University, Rome
Wednesday, April 27th, 12:30pm ET
[Online] Silsila Spring 2022 Series
Istanbul, Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, block-printed amulet (Inv. No. 13327) combining illustrations and different scripts
The lecture aims at illustrating two block-printed amulets found in the Qubbat al-khazna in the Great Mosque of Damascus and currently preserved in Istanbul, in the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts. These two specimens enlarge both the corpus of known block-printed amulets and the map of the regions in which the production of this peculiar type of written evidence is attested.The history of the find will be recalled in order to put the block-printed exemplars in a wider material and linguistic context. Moreover, the technique employed for their production will be discussed and other new specimens, of various provenances, will also be presented.
Arianna D’Ottone Rambach is an Associate Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at Sapienza-University of Rome, Junior Fellow at the Sapienza School for Advanced Studies (SSAS: 2014-2017; 2017-2020), and Corresponding Member of the Académie Royale des Sciences d’Outre-Mer (Bruxelles). In 2018 she was awarded the Samir Shamma Prize of the Royal Numismatic Society (London). Numismatic consultant for the Qatar National Museum (QNM, Doha – Oct 2021-Jan 2022), she is currently Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), Berkeley (Jan-May 2022). Her main fields of research are: Arabic manuscripts (palaeography, codicology, edition of texts), Arabic Papyrology and Numismatics.Date: Wednesday, April 27th Time: 12:30-2:30pm Location: Online This event will take place as a live Webinar at 12:30pm ET (New York time). To register as an attendee, please use the following link: https://nyu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_gouvtv05QIi3IABT1PN22Q Only registered attendees will be able to access this event.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
Professor Barry Flood will give an online lecture on Thursday morning at 8am US time, 2pm French time, in a seminar series « Gestes d’images » at theInstitut national d’histoire de l’art in Paris. The title of the seminar is “Absorber, manger” and I’m presenting along with Jérémie Koering, University of Fribourg. The title of my talk is “Imbibing the Image, Tasting the Text: Islamic ‘Magic-Medicinal Bowls in Context”, and details can be found here.
Bol « magico-médicinal » islamique, in Jacques Martin, Explication des divers monuments singuliers qui ont rapport à la religion des plus anciens peuples, Paris, 1739, pl. XII.
Imbibing the Image, Tasting the Text : Islamic ‘Magic-Medicinal’ Bowls in Context
Although sometimes contested, the ingestion of images, texts and efficacious matter is among a range of prophylactic practices long established in the Islamic world. These include the imbibing of sacred text through the medium of ink inscribed on ceramic bowls and then washed with liquids. Around the sixth century Hijri (twelfth century CE), the production of metal bowls engraved with images, texts and efficacious signs for use against a wide range of ailments attests to an intensification and commodification of these more ephemeral traditions of iconophagy and logophagy. The metal bowls, which could be used and reused by different consumers, are assemblages of distinct efficacious technologies, rendered up for practical use in the space of the vessel. Uniting haptic, verbal and visual modes of consumption, the bowls raise questions of efficacy, embodiment, and mediation of particular relevance to the theme, ‘Absorber, manger’.
Michael W. Kwakkelstein | Director (NIKI) has the pleasure to invite you to the lecture on Botticelli’s Man of Sorrows, by our scholar-in-residence, Dennis Geronimus, PhD. (Department of Art History, New York University).
Anouk Cohen, CNRS Paris Wednesday, April 20th, 12:30pm ET
[Online] Silsila Spring 2022 Series
Miniature copies of the Qur’an. Casablanca (Morocco, February 2011)Sold by the thousands at cheap prices and available in increasingly varied forms and media, the Qur’an-book (mushaf in Arabic, so as to distinguish the revelation – qur’an – from its support) is now connected to modes of consumption and pleasure not previously integral to qur’anic practices of interpretation, memorization and recitation. For example, today one can come across a mushaf with perfumed pages, mushaf electronic audio pens, the mushaf online, translations into several languages, and so on. Whereas the content of the revelation permits no alteration, the materials of which it is composed are open to change by sellers seeking to fulfill users’ diverse needs and turn a profit. These observations on the Quran as a book-object led me to analyze the ways in which the recent proliferation of Qurans in increasingly diverse forms and media has gone hand in hand, in Morocco, with a change in the relationship between society, Quranic transmission, and Islam at large.
Installation image of Mostly New: Selections from the NYU Art Collection. Photo by Nicholas Papananias, courtesy Grey Art Gallery, NYU
Mostly New: Selections from the NYU Art CollectionNow on view at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery through June 17, 2022The Grey Art Gallery at New York University is pleased to present Mostly New: Selections from the NYU Art Collection, the museum’s first exhibition since it closed in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Curated by the Grey’s Lynn Gumpert and Michèle Wong, the exhibition presents a compelling sampling of the New York University Art Collection, with more than 90 artworks by nearly 60 artists.
Mostly New highlights one of the NYU Art Collection’s strongest components—modern American art from the 1940s to the present, particularly paintings and prints by artists who lived and worked in the rich cultural landscape of downtown New York City. Figurative works by luminaries like Keith Haring and Andy Warhol introduce viewers to other influential figures of the downtown arts scene in the 1980s, such as dancers Bill T. Jones and Jock Soto. Work by artist Donald Baechler, who emerged in the ’80s as part of the East Village creative community alongside the likes of Warhol and Haring, reveals the artist’s interest in formal issues of line, shape, and color. Likewise, Brooklyn-based artist Deborah Kass explores pop culture as it intersects with art history. A late painting by Grace Hartigan, an influential member of the New York School, shows how the artist blended her signature Abstract Expressionist sensibility with a renewed interest in the figure. Influenced by 1960s counterculture and life in her native California, work by Mary Heilmann presents an upbeat, eccentric view of geometric abstraction. While Glenn Ligon is best known for works comprising stenciled fragments of famous texts, a 2004 print presents a more abstract exploration of issues of identity and the Black experience. A rare portrait by photographer Adam Fuss commemorates art patrons Dr. James Cottrell and Joseph Lovett, who maintain vital friendships with artists whose work they collect.
The NYU Art Collection also boasts significant photography holdings. Brooklyn-born photographer Emil Cadoo, who eventually moved to Paris in hopes of escaping racism in the United States, combined images of human and botanical subjects with textured overlays that expressed the subject’s inner psyche. Photojournalist and Lower Manhattan resident Danny Lyon turned his camera toward large-scale demolition projects going on in the neighborhood in the late 1960s. Harry Callahan’s experimental prints represent an important juncture in the history of photography when the creative capacities of the camera were explored. Cindy Sherman assumes a variety of guises for her self-portraits, appropriating characters from well-known stories as well as art history. Like Sherman, drag performance artist and actor Ethyl Eichelberger donned the identities of influential historical figures, as seen in photos by Peter Hujar, a chronicler of downtown New York’s creative vanguard and queer communities during the 1970s and ’80s. Work by Japanese-born New York transplant Kenji Nakahashi reveals the abstract imagery in everyday settings, like city subway stations. Miwa Yanagi applies a more socially conscious eye to the world around her—her series Elevator Girls investigates gender norms for Japanese women in the late 1990s.
In line with the principles of the museum’s founder, Abby Weed Grey, the Grey Art Gallery also collects modern and contemporary art from the Middle East. Mostly New particularly highlights work by artists from Iran, where Mrs. Grey traveled eight times in the 1960s and ’70s. Parviz Tanavoli is one of Iran’s foremost sculptors and, through his close friendship with Abby Grey, helped shape the museum’s remarkable holdings. Like his sculptures, Tanavoli’s works on paper utilize motifs from Persian culture, including symbols of folklore and mysticism and objects found in bazaars. A 1965 work by Marcos Grigorian—a pioneering Iranian artist and professor at the University of Tehran—reflects the artist’s preoccupation with earth and mud as artistic medium, recalling the Iranian desert. Informed by Persian miniature painting, work by Tehran-born artist Shiva Ahmadi features mythical creatures and enthroned figures characterized by ornate patterns, rich textures, and vivid hues. Shahpour Pouyan’s reinterpretation of traditional Persian miniature painting is absent of all figures, drawing attention instead to the landscape and domestic settings. Having moved away from her native Iran as a young child, Samira Abbassy uses her work as a means of exploring her relationship to Iranian culture and broader issues of identity. A photograph by the Emirati-born artist Farah Al Qasimi—donated by the founder of the Sharjah-based Barjeel Art Foundation, who collaborated with the Grey on Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s (2020)—offers viewers a playful glimpse into life in the Persian Gulf. [Download Full Press Release]
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Image descriptions, from top to bottom:
(1) A gallery with blonde wood floors and high white walls is decorated with paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures.
(2) A poster depicts the figure of a nude Black man covered head to toe in pictographs composed of thick red lines. The figure is posed with his backside to the viewer, his head turned so that his profile is visible to the viewer, and his legs and arms flung out widely. The rest of the poster is composed of black pictographs on a light background, causing the decorated figure and backdrop to merge. Small black text at the bottom of the poster reads, approximately from left to right: “Keith Haring: Into 84, 163 Mercer Street, New York City, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, 925-8732, 1984 Dec. 03, Jan. 07 (c) Keith Haring, Photo: Tseng Kwong Chi, Model: Choreographer: Bill T. Jones.”
(3) A grayscale photograph depicts two clocks sitting on a scale that rests on a tabletop. The left clock reads 12:04, and the right clock reads 12:15. The scale is balanced, implying that the two different times carry the same weight.
(4) A rectangular printed and painted page is worn and torn at the edges, stained brown with age. The page bears lines of Persian calligraphy, encased by a rectangular border. Within the border, alongside the calligraphy, is a colorfully painted scene of a handsome grey horse that walks with a gold birdcage on its back. Within the cage is a red-eyed, green-feathered bird that seems to swell beyond the confines of the gold bars.
From archeological contexts to urban studies, the idea of the palimpsest is often invoked to denote the layered quality of certain artifacts and spaces. Whether deployed as a metaphor or to denote a physical quality, the idea of the palimpsest relates the materiality of mark-making to the more abstract realm of temporality. The palimpsest is heterochronous, marked by the co-existent traces of two or more moments. In its materiality and temporality, the palimpsest shares aspects of the assemblage. But it also often implies an over-writing or re-writing in which practices and strategies of negation or co-option are inseparable from the articulation of power. Finbarr Barry Flood’s talk as part of the Spring 2022 Intra-Disciplinary Seminar series will consider questions of temporality and visibility raised by a range of palimpsest objects, and their potential implications for current debates about the legacy of ethically or politically problematic monuments.
Finbarr Barry Flood is director of Silsila: Center for Material Histories and William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of the Humanities at the Institute of Fine Arts and Department of Art History, New York University. He teaches and publishes on devotional art, iconoclasm, image theory, technologies of representation, modernity and Orientalism. Recent publications include Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter (Princeton UP, 2009) and Technologies de dévotion dans les arts de l’Islam: pèlerins, reliques, copies (Musée du Louvre/Hazan, 2019). He has just co-written with Beate Fricke, University of Bern, a book entitled Archives of Flotsam – Objects and Early Globalism, to be published by Princeton University Press.
The IDS public lecture series is part of the Robert Lehman Visiting Artist Program at The Cooper Union. We are grateful for major funding from the Robert Lehman Foundation. The IDS public lecture series is also made possible by generous support from the Open Society Foundations.
Fields of Vision 