Symposium
Saturday, February 1, 10 am – 6 pm
Helmut Stern Auditorium
University of Michigan Museum of Art
525 S. State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109
This one-day symposium will accompany the exhibition of Doris Duke’s collection of Islamic art, which will be on display at the University of Michigan Museum of Art from January 25 – May 4, 2014. The show exhibits Islamic art of the pre-modern period along with its reception, collection, and revival during the 19th and 20th centuries. The symposium aims to shed further light on the many ways in which collectors, scholars, artists, and architects have encountered Islamic artistic traditions during the modern period. Speakers will explore how “Islamic” art was defined and received in both European (British, German, Greek, and Balkan) and American museum and academic contexts, as well as revived for a variety of nation-building purposes in Islamic lands today. Taken altogether, these presentations highlight how Islamic art—as a constructed scholarly discipline and corpus of selected objects—must be considered a global phenomenon that has been constructed through the efforts of various artistic entrepreneurs at the same time as it has been entangled in the cultural politics of Colonialism, Orientalism, and globalization over the course of the past two centuries.This conference is organized by UMMA and UM Associate Professor of Islamic Art Christiane Grube.
Schedule
10 am/Welcome Remarks, Christiane Gruber
10:15 am/Greco-Balkan Encounters
Dr. George Manginis, Consultant, Benaki Museum, Athens
Paper Title: “Appropriating Islamic Art in Modern Greece”
Ashley Dimmig, Ph.D. student, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Paper Title: “Orientalism, Sarmatism, and the Third Reich: The Afterlife of Ottoman Imperial Tents in Europe”
Discussant: Christiane Gruber, Associate Professor, University of Michigan
12 pm/Lunch Break
2 pm/Museum Encounters
Dr. Moya Carey, Iran Heritage Foundation Curator for the Iranian Collections, Asian Department, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Paper Title: “Buying into Iran: 19th-Century Acquisition Strategies at the Victoria and Albert Museum”
Dr. Keelan Overton, Adjunct Lecturer, History of Art, Middle East Studies Center, Portland State University, Portland, OR. (Formerly Chief Curator, Doris Duke Collection, Shangri La, Hawa’i)
Paper Title: “From the Garage Mahal to the Moroccan Court: Constructing Islamicate Space in America”
Discussant: Ashley Miller, Ph.D. candidate, University of Michigan
3:45 pm/Tea Break in UMMA Commons
4:15 pm/Architectural Encounters
Dr. Ulrich Marzolph, Professor of Islamic Studies, Göttingen University, Germany
Paper Title: “Coffeehouses, Public Baths, and More: German Architecture in the Oriental Style”
Dr. Kishwar Rizvi, Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture
Yale University, New Haven
Paper Title: “A History of One’s Own: Islamic Architecture in the Service of Nation Building”
Discussant: Ünver Rüstem, Postdoctoral Fellow, Columbia University
For inquiries, please contact Christiane Gruber at cjgruber@umich.edu.