Third of Five-Part Series with Montalvo Arts Center
In this third of five conversations in our IRAQ: REFRAME series, Abbas Milani, director of Stanford’s Iranian Studies Program, hosts Nada Shabout, an authority on Iraqi art history, and McGuire Gibson, the University of Chicago archaeologist who co-authored Lost Heritage: Antiquities Stolen from Iraq’s Regional Museums, the first academic publication to call attention to the problem of looting after the First Gulf War.
IRAQ: REFRAME is an innovative series of visual, performing,
and media arts at the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga through April
2008. The Aurora Forum is pleased to join with the Montalvo Arts
Center to present five public conversations with scholars, artists, and
journalists whose knowledge of past and present conflicts in the
Mesopotamian cradle of civilization will reframe our understanding of the current situation in Iraq.
NADA SHABOUT
An authority on Arab visual culture and
Islamic art, Nada Shabout has dedicated her career to documenting
artwork missing and stolen from the Iraqi Museum of Modern Art in
Baghdad, damaged by fire and looting after bombings in 2003. Her
current project is "Recovering Iraq’s Modern Heritage: Constructing and
Digitally Documenting the Collection of the former Saddam Center for
the Arts." She curated Moments from 20th Century Iraqi Art, on exhibition at Montalvo Arts Center through April 6. Her book, Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics was published in 2007.
http://www.unt.edu/untresearch/lost.htm
MCGUIRE GIBSON
McGuire Gibson is one of the world's leading
authorities on ancient Mesopotamia. He has done fieldwork in Iraq and
elsewhere in the region and has published extensively. He was as part
of a National Geographic delegation visiting Iraq to inspect
archaeological sites in 2003. He also has provided expert advice to
UNESCO and other cultural and scholarly organizations working to
preserve the archaeological heritage of Iraq. In 1992, he and colleague
Augusta McMahon published Lost Heritage: Antiquities Stolen from Iraq's Regional Museums,
the first academic publication to call attention to the problem of
looting after the first Gulf War. He also is the author and co-author
of numerous articles and books on ancient Mesopotamia.
http://experts.uchicago.edu/experts.php?id=44
ABBAS MILANI (moderator)
Abbas Milani, a visiting professor in the
Department of Political Science, is director of the Iranian Studies
Program at Stanford and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at
the Hoover Institution.