Writing/Curating the Middle East

“Writing/Curating the Middle East,” is organized by the History of Art Department, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Council on Middle East Studies, and takes place on Thursday and Friday, March 30–31, 2017. The symposium opens with a keynote lecture on Thursday, March 30, delivered by the celebrated Egyptian artist Wael Shawky, and sessions on Friday examine issues of national identity and diversity, bringing together curators and art historians who engage with the Middle East through research, publications, and exhibitions. This symposium takes new avenues of research as a launching pad from which it examines entanglements and synchronicity, proposing a new discourse on art from the Middle East that illustrates both how it was inspired by and contributed to global modern art movements. The symposium is organized by Kishwar Rizvi, Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture, and Pamela Franks, the Seymour H. Knox, Jr., Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and is sponsored by the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund from the MacMillan Center. The keynote lecture is generously funded by the Hayden Fund at the Yale University Art Gallery.