Curatorial Strategies in Crisis Context, Key Moments and Places

From the Bagdad Modern Art Museum troubled history, a symbol of petro-cultural growth, through the Gulbenkian family, even before the landmark first oil crisis, to the Damascus Museum undocumented Modern Art Collection, the examples are numerous as to raise the dialectic of (in)visibility as the main paradigm for thinking museum history and studies in the region. In order to expand our understanding of the regional dynamics and also our accessible conceptual tools between postcolonial art history and museum theory, these primary examples will be completed by additional accounts around the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art; which collection has been subject to infinite speculations; and the Algiers Musée des Beaux Arts which represents one of the rare cases of contested and somehow decolonized collection.

Researchers Mathilde Ayoub (Cergy Paris Université/INP), Emile Goudal (Université de Lille), Morad Montazami (Zamân Books & Curating), and Firouzeh Saghafi (Université de Genève) will share their respective research on the Damascus undocumented modern art collection, the Algiers Musée des Beaux-Arts, the Baghdad Modern Art Museum, and the Teheran Museum of Contemporary Art, in an attempt to think of museum history and studies in the region through the dialectic of (in)visibility.

This panel is conceived in collaboration with Zamân Books & Curating and benefits from the support of Ifpo.

Zamân Books & Curating is dedicated to the study of Arab, African and Asian modernities, working towards the emergence of a transnational and postcolonial art history. Such new mappings of art histories develop through monograph and collective exhibitions, the research journal Zamân, textes, images & documents, and different kinds of publication, as well as reediting – or translanting – to-be-rediscovered and rare material.

The cycle Visiting (In)Visible Museums is curated by Mathilde Ayoub, following an invitation by Marie-Nour Héchaimé from the Nicolas Sursock Museum.

The Sursock Museum 2021-2022 Public Program is supported by the Lebanon Solidarity Fund launched by the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture – AFAC and Culture Resource (Al-Mawred Al-Thaqafy).