Spring 2020 PRACTITIONER-IN-RESIDENCE
Curating Architecture, Design, & Material Culture in the Middle East by Mohamed Elshahed
Workshop Description: The history of modern architecture and design has traditionally focused on Europe and the United States and linked to the Industrial Revolution. These narratives, which often claimed universality, omitted large swaths of the world including the Middle East, where the colonial presence and a variety of other conditions produced a diverse array of design and architectural dilemmas, innovations and invented traditions. In the aftermath of 9/11 and subsequently the Arab Spring, interest in the arts and culture of the region, including its design landscape, has expanded. Exhibitions (and publications) have been important sites for the dissemination of corrective narratives, they have also become marketing tools by governments projecting carefully curated images of national modernity in international arenas such as biennales and design weeks. How has new research and criticism on architecture and design from the region been circulated through exhibitions and publishing? We will look at exhibitions and publications, discuss museums and collections, explore the narratives surrounding histories of modernism and map out the landscape of exhibiting architecture, design and material culture in the region today.
Schedule:
After an introductory session the class will consist of six weekly meetings until Spring Break.
Classes will meet at the following times: 10am - 12pm
Monday February 3, 2020
Monday February 10, 2020
Monday February 17, 2020
Monday February 24, 2020
Monday March 2, 2020
Monday March 9, 2020
We will potentially have one more class after Spring break on March 23, 2020.
Details:
-First priority for registration will be for students enrolled in the MA program in Near Eastern Studies (or GloJo-NEST), and to others with permission.
-There is a required reading list that will be sent to you once you register.
-Participants from all disciplines are welcome to join.
-No prerequisite other than your enthusiasm.
Location: Hagop Kevorkian Center's Richard Ettinghausen Library, 255 Sullivan Street at Washington Square South.
Space is limited, if interested, please fill and send response back, as soon as possible.
The DEADLINE is February 6, 2020.
Mohamed Elshahed is a curator and architectural historian focusing on modernism in Egypt and the Arab World. He earned his Masters from MIT’s Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture and a PhD from NYU’s Department of Middle Eastern Studies. His work spans architecture, design and material culture. He is the curator of the British Museum’s Modern Egypt Project and Egypt’s winning pavilion, Modernist Indignation, at the 2018 London Design Biennale. In 2019 Apollo Magazine named him among the 40 under 40 influential thinkers and artists in the Middle East. In 2011 he founded Cairobserver.com with six printed issues of the magazine by the same name, distributed for free in events in Cairo, Beirut and Dubai which aimed to stimulate public debates around issues of architecture, heritage and urbanism in the region. He is the author of Cairo Since 1900: An Architectural Guide (AUC Press, January 2020), the first comprehensive survey of Cairo's modern architecture.
