About the program
In recent years, art and architectural historical focus has shifted from intracultural to intercultural study. Long established geographic, historical, religious, and cultural boundaries are no longer easily accepted as disciplinary boundaries. In fact, terms such as boundaries, frontiers, limits, and area-studies are being critically questioned as analytical and methodological tools. More research is being conducted in the overlapping spaces where empires, cultures, traditions, or even styles meet and exchange ideas, views, beliefs, peoples, and practices, and, in the process, create art and architecture.
The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT is organizing a symposium to explore artistic and architectural transformations on the Islamic frontiers: territorial, conceptual, and cultural. The symposium will gather together scholars who are engaged in investigating topics pertaining to its theme, such as the emergence of an "Islamic" artistic culture from the Classical Mediterranean, Iranian, and Hindu-Buddhist cultures, the role of various European, Asian, and African cultures in the articulation of Islamic visual expressions, the rejection and/or cultivation of past experiences in contemporary creativity, and esthetic values which transcend their cultural settings. Invited scholars will present their research in the context of Islamic history. Every presentation will be followed by a discussion period.
PROGRAM
Saturday, May 19th
Welcome
Stanford Anderson
Head, Department of Architecture, MIT
Opening Remarks
Nasser Rabbat
Aga Khan Professor, MIT
First Session
"What Should one Know About Islamic Art"
Abstract
Oleg Grabar
Professor Emeritus, School of Historical Studies, Institute of Advance Study, Princeton, NJ
Aga Khan Professor Emeritus, Harvard University
"The Dialogic Dimension in Umayyad Iconography"
Abstract
Nasser Rabbat
Aga Khan Professor, MIT
"Refiguring Iconoclasm:
Image Mutilation and Aesthetic Innovation in the Indo-Ghurid Mosque"
Abstract
Finbarr Barry Flood
CASVA, National Gallery of Art , Washington DC.
Saturday, May 19th
Second Session
"Crossing Lines: Architecture in Early Islamic South Asia"
Abstract
Michael W. Meister
Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor, University of Pennsylvania
"Looking East, Looking West: The Timurids and Ming China"
Abstract
Priscilla Soucek
Havok Kevorkian Professor of Islamic Art, New York University
"'Mudejar' Revisited:Muqaddima to the Reconstruction of Perception,
Devotion and Experience at the Convent of Clarisas, Tordesillas, Spain (s. XIV)"
Abstract
Cynthia Robinson
Department of Art & Art History, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Third Session
"On Wings of Diesel: Spiritual Space and Religious Imagination in Pakistani Truck Decoration"
Abstract
Jamal Elias
Associate Professor of Religion, Amherst College
"Overwhelmed by Vision: Describing the Visual Experience"
Abstract
Renata Holod
Professor, Department of History of Art, UPenn
For more information click "Further official information" below.