MAKING
THE CASE FOR
ARAB ART
Al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art is developing a new model for research and access, and will help change the very manner in which Arab art is situated in the world of academia and in the public perception.
Al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art is the culmination of a half-century pursuit for art historian Salwa Mikdadi, one that she hopes will provide, encourage, and promote young scholars delving into the understudied field of Arab art.
It began when Mikdadi, the Professor of Practice of Art History, embarked on her academic journey studying Arab art in American universities abroad. At the time, in the early 1970s, Arab art was a little studied field, and one that art historians considered “derivative” and not worthy of an academic pursuit.
Early rejections of Arab art by American museums and the struggles she faced in tracking down important artists fading into obscurity led Mikdadi to dedicate her entire career to changing that perception. The result after 50 years of debunking the deep-set and somewhat condescending perception of Arab art is found in Al Mawrid. The Center is a first of its kind that looks to not only be a primary resource for scholarly support and academia, but to change the very manner in which Arab art is situated in the world of academia and in the public perception.
"Our strategy is to develop a new historical narrative about this region, from this region."
Salwa Mikdadi
Professor of Practice of Art History
"The Arab Art Archive is working now in scanning primary source materials pertaining to modern and contemporary art across the Arab world."
“Our strategy is to develop a new historical narrative about this region, from this region,” she said. “The fact that this is a center situated in NYUAD, in Abu Dhabi, is a strategic advantage. It is easily accessible to scholars conducting research on modern art in the region but beyond logistics it also offers a fresh vantage point on the art history of the surrounding Arab world. Most people do not realize that, since the 1980s, the UAE and the Gulf more broadly have been the crossroads of Arab art. It is here that artists from different parts of the Arab world came to show work, to teach or to practice, and those links are our starting point for developing a new historical narrative ,” she said.
The Center is built on three pillars: research, pedagogy, and assembling a digital archive of documents that would support the study of art in the Arab world – the region's first academic center for this pursuit.
Haraka: Experimental Lab for Arab Art and Social Thought, which is a project within Al Mawrid and directed by May Al Dabbagh, takes the intellectual life of the region as a starting point for exploring alternative modes of knowledge production about its societies and history. The Center’s lab is an interdisciplinary and dynamic space that bridges the arts and social sciences. It aims to produce knowledge about the region by “theorizing up” from the materials, ideas, and institutions of the region.
For Mikdadi, the archives, another element of the Center, are central to what Al Mawrid aims to achieve. The team is developing ways to make archival materials digitally available. For Mikdadi, universal access to primary sources is an essential part to changing the narrative around Arab art, one that she says is a struggle for many in the field.
Hunting for Archives
Mikdadi knows all too well the struggle Arab art scholars have in hunting down information about a certain scholarly subject, much of which entails conducting primary research in a region where several countries are rife with turmoil and simply inaccessible.
As a younger scholar, she experienced what it meant to engage in a somewhat-tumultuous treasure hunt for source material – an experience that is now significantly more dangerous considering the regional conflicts.
“I’ve investigated sources on artists that have passed away for some time now. I’ve had to go visit their family’s descendants, sometimes their great grandchildren, and they were not even aware that there might be anything at all that the artist has left so they will be rummaging cupboards and saying ‘is this what you want?’ It takes a great deal of time,” she said.
This ignorance of the historiographic value of documentary materials made it more important to develop the archives in an academic center in the region connected to a strong liberal arts education.
The al Mawrid Art Archive is working now to digitize and catalog primary source materials pertaining to modern and contemporary art across the Arab world. The Center also houses Akkasah Photography Archive, which documents different histories and practices of photography in the broader region with a focus on the UAE and the Gulf.
The Center is currently in the process of collecting everything in the collection of an artist, a gallery or cultural organization that is not the artwork itself: exhibition catalogs, correspondence, school records, unpublished writings, administrative ephemera, sketches, and art journals.
As part of this pursuit, the Center also provides educational opportunities for NYUAD students, promoting their learning in the field and providing opportunities to undertake original research on hitherto neglected topics in Arab art.
In one instance, and based on a passing comment her brother made about South Korean companies in Kuwait, Mikdadi urged a South Korean student intern to look into connections between Arab art and their home country while they visited for the summer. The results of the research proved rich and surprising.
These were the kinds of educational experiences that Mikdadi has struggled to facilitate in a permanent manner throughout her journey. However, with the Center now established, the mainstay art historian can rest assured that future Arab art scholars will suffer less in their discovery of the field that has taken Mikdadi from the cupboards of unsuspecting descendants, to her home in the Al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art.
Making the Case for Arab Art / Words: Naser Al Wasmi / Editor: Abigail Kelly
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