Recent Events

01/31/2024 05:30 PM ISAW Lecture Hall
Photo of museum display case containing statue depicting kneeling king offering small globe-shaped vessels to large falcon deity.

The Kingdom of Kush:

Research on an Early State Society in Africa

Mohamed Bashir

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. The kingdom of Kush was a powerful state in the Nile Valley that existed from around 1000 BC. - 350 AD. This kingdom consisted of two phases, the Naptian and the Meroitic phase.
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01/25/2024 05:30 PM ISAW Gallery
A large gallery room. In the foreground a standing wall partition reads “Through the Lens, Latif Al Ani’s Visions of Ancient Iraq.” Behind this is a second wall partition with mounted photographs. The gallery walls have mounted photographs, paintings, and

Expanding the Ancient World Workshop:

Exploring Iraqi Photography, Art, and Identity in "Through the Lens: Latif Al Ani’s Visions of Ancient Iraq"

Organized by the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World

This workshop will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. Learn more about the ISAW exhibition "Through the Lens: Latif Al Ani's Visions of Ancient Iraq," which explores the history of Iraq through the eyes of early explorers (1800s), the modernist photographer Latif Al Ani (1950-1970), and contemporary Iraqi artists.
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01/24/2024 05:30 PM Online
Installation of ISAW's Exhibition 'Through the Lens: Latif Al Ani's Visions of Ancient Iraq'

Exhibition Lecture: (Un)broken Continuity

Counter-narratives of a Mesopotamian Past

Kiersten Neumann

This lecture will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants.
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12/14/2023 05:30 PM ISAW Lecture Hall
Movie poster featuring a black and white photograph of a man looking to the side and holding an old camera with the words "Iraq's Invisible Beauty" overlaid ontop of the image along

Exhibition Event: Screening of Iraq's Invisible Beauty

Jurgen Buedts, Wafaa Bilal

ISAW is pleased to host a screening of the groundbreaking documentary "Iraq's Invisible Beauty" written and directed by Jurgen Buedst and Sahim Omar Kalifa. The screening will be preceded by a pre-recorded conversation between the director Jurgen Buedts and the Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal, Arts Professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
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12/13/2023 05:30 PM Online
Event banner with text on green background; photo of textile depicting a man riding a horse

Expanding the Ancient World Workshop

Nomads in World History: How Human Mobility Shapes Society

Organized by the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World

This workshop will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. It is difficult to teach nomadic history for several reasons: many nomadic cultures did not leave textual records of their own history, nomadic settlement patterns diverge from those of "Classical Cultures" such as the ancient Greeks or Egyptians, and most students today do not have first-hand experience of traditional nomadic lifeways.
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12/11/2023 01:00 PM Online
Two seated statues, each depicting a person with a long robe carrying a bowl.

Archaeology and Cultural Memory:

The Social Construction of Death and the Hypogeum at Qatna

Beate Pongratz-Leisten

This lecture will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. The sensational finds of an intact royal hypogeum below the palace of Qatna / modern Tell Misherifeh northeast of Homs in Syria have been discussed within the framework of the Rites of Passage as developed by the French folklorist and ethnographer Arnold. This talk will discuss the archaeological evidence from a religious-historical and anthropological perspective introducing the audience into the social construction of death and the afterlife.
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12/06/2023 01:00 PM Online
Latif Al Ani posing with his camera in Iraq.

Exhibition Lecture: Artists in Conversation

Adel Abidin, Nadine Hattom, Hanaa Malallah, Mahmoud Obaidi, and Walid Siti

This event will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom link will be provided via email to registered participants. Please join us as Roberta Casagrande-Kim, Co-curator of ISAW’s Through the Lens: Latif Al Ani’s Visions of Ancient Iraq exhibition, hosts a conversation with artists Adel Abidin, Nadine Hattom, Hanaa Malallah, Mahmoud Obaidi, and Walid Siti as they discuss the genesis of this project. The artists will address the themes of the exhibition, discuss their works in relation to Latif Al Ani's pictures and Nineteenth century excavation practices, and evaluate the role of art in the depiction and understanding of ancient Iraq.
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11/28/2023 05:30 PM Online
Event banner with text on green background; combined image of Egyptian sarcophagus and dissected human figure

Expanding the Ancient World Workshop

Greece, Egypt, and the Body: Dissection and Mummification in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Organized by the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World

This workshop will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. The Ancient Greeks and the Ancient Egyptians held different beliefs about the workings of the body and about the handling of corpses.
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11/14/2023 06:30 PM NYU Silver Center for Arts and Science, Room 300
Movie poster featuring a black and white photograph of a man looking to the side and holding an old camera with the words "Iraq's Invisible Beauty" overlaid ontop of the image along

Exhibition Event: Screening of Iraq's Invisible Beauty at NYU's Silver Center

Jurgen Buedts

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. To celebrate the opening of the Institute of the Study of the Ancient World’s new exhibition Through the Lens: Latif Al Ani’s Visions of Ancient Iraq, join us for a screening of Iraq’s Invisible Beauty (2022), a documentary exploring the work and life of the father of Iraqi photography, Latif Al Ani.
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11/14/2023 05:30 PM Online
Event banner with text on green background; image of painted wall fragment depicting veiled person in blue clothing

Expanding the Ancient World Workshop

Reckoning with Ancient Fragments: The Transcultural World of the Sogdians

Organized by the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World

This workshop will take place online. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Zoom information will be provided via confirmation email to registered participants. Expanding the Ancient World is a series of professional development workshops and online resources for teachers. The medieval civilization of the Sogdians, from their homeland in modern-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, was once renowned as an international agent of transcultural exchange across the Eurasian ‘Silk Road’. However, the source material from the Sogdians that survives is highly fragmentary and the limited textual evidence is usually written from outsiders’ perspectives.
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11/08/2023 05:30 PM ISAW Lecture Hall
Al Ani leaning against a tree with the words "Through the Lens: Latif Al Ani’s Visions of Ancient Iraq". November 8, 2023 - February 25, 2024

Through the Lens Gallery Talk: Curators and Artists in Conversation

Exhibition Lecture

Pedro Azara, Nadine Hattom, Mahmoud Obaidi

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Please join us as Roberta Casagrande-Kim, Co-curator of ISAW’s Through the Lens, Latif Al Ani’s Visions of Ancient Iraq exhibition, hosts a conversation with Pedro Azara (Barcelona University) and artists Nadine Hattom and Mahmoud Obaidi as they discuss the genesis of this project. Pedro, Nadine, and Mahmoud will address the themes of the exhibition, discuss the contemporary artworks on display, and evaluate the role of photography in the depiction and understanding of ancient Iraq.
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11/01/2023 05:30 PM ISAW Lecture Hall
Alabaster statue of a standing man wearing a robe in front a relief panel

Yemen — The Fate of Archaeological Heritage

Jérémie Schiettecatte

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. In the early 1970s, Yemen was emerging from a long period of isolation. Archaeological research gradually took off, making it possible to retrace the major stages in the evolution of the land of the Queen of Sheba. The monumentality of its architecture and the refinement of its arts were revealed, along with thousands of ancient monumental inscriptions. The outlines of a South Arabian civilization were gradually taking shape. Ancient South Arabia has turned out to be quite different from the misleading image of a desert Arabia roamed only by nomads.
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