VCUarts Qatar to host 10th Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art

Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar) – a Qatar Foundation (QF) partner, will host the 10th Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art from November 11-13.The theme is ‘Islamic Art History and the Global Turn: Theory, Method, Practice.’The symposium will be led by co-chairs, Dr Radha Dalal and Dr Hala Auji.Dr Dalal is associate professor of Islamic Art and Architecture and director of the Art History programme at VCUarts Qatar. Her research focuses on visual cultures of mobility and urbanism, with a particular emphasis on the Ottoman Empire and its socio-political interactions with other European and Asian polities during the 19th and early 20th centuries.Dr Auji is an associate professor of Art History at VCUarts in Richmond and the Hamad bin Khalifa Endowed Chair for Islamic Art. Informed by her interdisciplinary background in graphic design, criticism and theory and art history, Auji’s research explores 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 MediterraneanThe conference is open to the public and those interested can register at https://islamicart.qatar.vcu.edu/registration-2023/Globalisation’s sociological and economic concerns have extended to issues related to art and visual culture, including the varied approaches used to study art history.The 10th Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art examines how art history’s concerns with the Global Turn, as well as associated calls for decolonial, diverse, inclusive, and equitable histories, have been taken up by scholars, educators, curators, and related practitioners of Islamic art history.The opening evening will feature the keynote address followed by a reception. The keynote address will be delivered by Dr Finbarr Barry Flood, director of Silsila: Centre for Material Histories and William R Kenan, Jr, professor of the Humanities at the Institute of Fine Arts and Department of Art History, New York University.Since it was first held in 2004, each edition of the Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art has addressed significant themes and issues in understanding the visual arts of the Islamic lands.The symposium is co-sponsored by Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VCUarts Qatar and Qatar Foundation and has been held every two years. Following each symposium, the research and discussions presented are compiled and edited into a book published by Yale University Press.