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As the new Hamad bin Khalifa Endowed Chair for Islamic Art at VCU School of the Arts, it is my great pleasure to share details about the 2023 Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art in its tenth iteration, which I am chairing alongside Radha Dalal, Director of Art History and Associate Professor of Islamic Art, VCUarts Qatar. Since joining the Department of Art History at VCU’s Richmond campus, I have been inspired by the program and the school’s collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to teaching, and scholarship. VCU has been an ideal home for my research, which is informed by my background in graphic design, criticism and theory, and art history. In my publications, including my monograph, and teaching I explore the history of the book, print culture, cultural modernity, museum practices, and portraiture in the Islamic world, with a focus on Arabic-speaking communities of the Eastern Mediterranean. Having lived and worked in Beirut (Lebanon) and Dubai (UAE) for several years, I was thrilled that my new job, while based in Virginia, would allow for exciting opportunities to collaborate with colleagues at VCU Qatar and throughout the Global South, particularly at a time when we are witnessing major global changes and challenges.
From the far-reaching impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, to the recent advancements in AI technology that will likely change our personal and professional lives in unforeseeable ways, over the past three years we have all had to shift our perspectives to accommodate new realities, and to “pivot” to new forms of teaching, producing, learning, and living. In its tenth iteration since its establishment nearly twenty years ago in 2004, the 2023 biennial HBK Symposium on Islamic Art strives to take stock of the recent changes, challenges, and successes that scholars, teachers, curators, and students have contended with in the “wake of the global turn.” The upcoming symposium, Islamic Art History & The Global Turn: Theory, Method, Practice, explores the ways in which the turn to the global and associated calls for decolonial, diverse, inclusive, and equitable histories have been taken up by scholars, educators, curators, and related practitioners of Islamic art history. Although scholarship on how Islamic art is studied, collected, and exhibited is on the rise, what is less addressed is how, and to what extent, these methods have related to pedagogical and curating practices. Bridging this gap between theory and practice, the 2023 Symposium will explore how the past two decades of debating methodologies for diverse, inclusive, decolonial, and global Islamic art histories have taken shape in classrooms, galleries, and related settings. The Symposium aims to highlight the challenges – and not just successes – of teaching, curating, and researching Islamic art history in a global context, while also contributing new perspectives to discourses on the global turn writ large.
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