In Changing Saudi Arabia, Art, Culture and Society in the Kingdom (Lynne Rienner, 2019), Sean Foley offers eye-opening insights into a changing society that is under the international magnifying glass. Using the prism of an exploding arts scene populated by artists, comedians, actors, directors and masters of new media from diverse backgrounds, Foley paints ... Show More
Jan 2025
Fernando Domínguez Rubio, "Still Life: Ecologies of the Modern Imagination at the Art Museum" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
How do you keep the cracks in Starry Night from spreading? How do you prevent artworks made of hugs or candies from disappearing? How do you render a fading photograph eternal—or should you attempt it at all? These are some of the questions that conservators, curators, registrars ... Show More
1 h
Jan 2025
Shannan Clark, "The Making of the American Creative Class: New York's Culture Workers and 20th-Century Consumer Capitalism" (Oxford UP, 2020)
During the middle decades of the twentieth century, the production of America’s consumer culture was centralized in New York to an extent unparalleled in the history of the United States. Every day tens of thousands of writers, editors, artists, performers, technicians, and secre ... Show More
1h 3m
Jan 2024
Amy Von Lintel, "Georgia O'Keeffe's Wartime Texas Letters" (Texas A&M UP, 2020)
In 1912, at age 24, Georgia O’Keeffe boarded a train in Virginia and headed west, to the prairies of the Texas Panhandle, to take a position as art teacher for the newly organized Amarillo Public Schools. Subsequently she would join the faculty at what was then West Texas State N ... Show More
42m 18s
Jun 2021
Caroline Seymour-Jorn, "Creating Spaces of Hope: Young Artists and the New Imagination in Egypt" (AU in Cairo Press, 2021)
It is now just over a decade since protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square started Egypt's chapter in the events of the Arab Spring. Much has been made in western criticism of art and culture's role in the revolution, but the everyday cultural production of studio artists, graffiti art ... Show More
59m 29s
Aug 2023
SULTAN AL-QASSEMI & DR RIDHA MOUMNI | A Historic Exhibition of Arab Art at Christie's London | Conversations
<p>What was it like curating the biggest exhibition of Arab art happening right now? Why is “Kawkaba: Highlights from the Barjeel Art Foundation” such a landmark exhibition? We sat down with the exhibition’s curator and deputy chair of Christie’s MENA, Dr Ridha Moumni, and the fo ... Show More
49m 48s
Aug 2022
Karen Archey, "After Institutions" (Les presses du réel, 2022)
Faced with waning state support, declining revenue, and forced entrepreneurialism, museums have become a threatened public space. Simultaneously, they have assumed the role of institutional arbiter in issues of social justice and accountability. The canon of Institutional Critiqu ... Show More
1h 8m
May 2021
Steve Dixon, "Cybernetic-Existentialism: Freedom, Systems, and Being-for-Others in Contemporary Arts and Performance" (Routledge, 2020)
Like the transdiscipline of cybernetics, the philosophical movement known as Existentialism rose to prominence in the decade following World War II, was communicated to the general public by a handful of charismatic evangelizers who, for a time, became bona fide celebrities in po ... Show More
1h 3m
May 2023
Jonathan Adeyemi, "Contemporary Art from Nigeria in the Global Markets: Trending in the Margins" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)
How does the art market work? In Contemporary Art from Nigeria in the Global Markets: Trending in the Margins (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Jonathan Adeyemi, who holds a PhD from, and was formerly Associate Lecturer in Arts Management and Cultural Policy at, Queen’s University Belf ... Show More
35m 39s
Aug 2023
BERNARD HAYKEL | Saudi Arabia in Transition | Conversations
<p>Studying Yemen, al-Shawkani, Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, and football. In this fascinating conversation with Professor Bernard Haykel, he offers deep insight into contemporary Saudi Arabia, the realities of pivoting an entire economy away from oil, and what MBS’ vision 2030 ac ... Show More
1h 26m
Apr 2022
Lisa Reilly, "The Invention of Norman Visual Culture: Art, Politics, and Dynastic Ambition" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
In The Invention of Norman Visual Culture: Art, Politics, and Dynastic Ambition (Cambridge UP, 2020), Lisa Reilly establishes a new interpretive paradigm for the eleventh and twelfth-century art and architecture of the Norman world in France, England, and Sicily. Traditionally, s ... Show More
51m 57s
Jun 2023
KIRSTEN SCHEID | Fantasmic Objects | Conversations
<p>In this episode of the afikra podcast, Professor Kirsten Scheid invites us into the world of Modern Art in Lebanon, and Lebanon through the lens of Modern Art. </p><p>We explore what art meant in the 1920s, before the establishment of the Lebanese state, how national imaginari ... Show More
1 h