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AKU-ISMC hosts material history guest lectures
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| Professor John Carswell's presentation, Chinese Porcelain and the Muslim World, explored different levels of cultural interaction between China and Western Europe. |
In May and April 2008, AKU-ISMC hosted guest lectures by Professor Doris Behrens-Abouseif of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and Professor John Carswell, the former Director of the Department of Islamic Works of Art at Sotheby’s, London.
Guest lectures by prominent scholars from around the world form part of the Institute’s MA Programme. Through these lectures, students are able to interact with key thinkers, making theories learnt in the classroom tangible and interactive, thereby enhancing their learning experience.
Before joining the SOAS in 2000, Professor Abouseif taught Islamic Art at the American University in Cairo and at the Universities of Freiburg and Munich in Germany. On two occasions, she was Visiting Professor at Harvard University within the Fine Art Department and the Graduate School of Design.
Abouseif’s lecture, The Aesthetics of Islamic Art, gave an overview of Islamic art in the pre-modern Muslim world. She explained that Islamic art is not necessarily religious art, and that it is actually made up of a great variety of arts and cultures. Abouseif explored Islamic approaches to art through the ages – the prevailing worldview being, that as the world is made to be enjoyed, aesthetic beauty is considered to be extremely important.
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| Abouseif’s lecture, The Aesthetics of Islamic Art, gave an overview of Islamic art in the pre-modern Muslim world. |
John Carswell was curator of the Oriental Institute Museum for 10 years and Director of the University of Chicago's Museum of Fine Arts. He was formerly the Director of the Department of Islamic Works of Arts at Sotheby's in London. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, Carswell spent a quarter of a century working in the Middle East where he served as Department Chair and Professor of Fine Arts at the American University of Beirut.
Carswell’s lecture, Chinese Porcelain and the Muslim World, explored different levels of cultural interaction between China and Western Europe, giving attention to the many intermediary points in between. Carswell explained that in the 1960s a large quantity of Chinese porcelain appeared in the market in Damascus.
The means by which this Chinese porcelain came to be in Damascus and its role among other collections of Chinese porcelain, Carswell noted, was very important. While the transactions and trade routes of porcelain were from East to West, he noted that the corresponding trajectory of culture was not just from China into the West, but rather, that interaction and borrowing occurred from both sides throughout history.
Both of the lectures formed part of the Material Cultures course of the Institute’s MA in Muslim Cultures. Throughout the year, students have participated in a range of different excursions and lectures, including visits to the Leighton House Museum and the Geffrye Museum in London, as well as an academic excursion to Istanbul.
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