Recent Events

This workshop will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Please join illustrator and teaching artist Joan Chiverton for an afternoon of sketching in the galleries in conjunction with the exhibition Rethinking Etruria. Develop your drawing skills and discover a new way of seeing the exhibit, as you sketch masterpieces and other objects. Following a brief introduction and tutorial, Ms. Chiverton will circulate the galleries and provide individual coaching, if desired. All skill levels are welcome, from beginner to advanced. Participants should bring their own drawing pad or paper with a board, but we will have paper on hand if necessary. Gallery specific pencils will be provided by ISAW. For conservation reasons pens, pastels, charcoal and paints need to be kept at home.

This year ISAW is participating in the Museum Mile Festival, a block party along Fifth Avenue between 82nd and 105th Street. The festival is free and all participating museums open their doors to the public for the evening. Fifth Avenue is closed down and the street transforms into a venue celebrating our NYC museums and the start of summer through art and music.

This workshop has been rescheduled for Monday, May 12th, at 5:30pm. The 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. This workshop will explore ancient Greek religious systems through the lens of a particular god, the god of healing, Asclepius.

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. Writing is such an integral part of our everyday lives that it is difficult to imagine how we could live without it. But just like so many of the other technologies that have become essential to us, writing had to be invented. Scholars studying the ancient past have discovered that writing was invented independently in four different places: in Mesopotamia (in modern-day Iraq) around 3300-3200 BCE; in ancient Egypt around 3200 BCE; in ancient China around 1200 BCE; and in ancient Mesoamerica (in modern-day Mexico) around 1000 BCE. In this workshop, we will focus on the invention of writing in Mesopotamia.

Maria Doerfler (Yale University; ISAW Visiting Research Scholar 2014-15) returns to ISAW to discuss wealth and death in late antique Syria, part of her forthcoming monograph from the Cambridge University Press, Death and Afterlife in Syriac Christianity: Social Identity and Emotional Communities.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. This lecture examines Arsacid luxury material beyond Iran both as object and idea. As under the Achaemenids before and Sasanians after, these charismatic objects potentially entangled or “assembled” aspects of identities of those outside the empire at a range of societal levels, including those who had dealings with the empire and those who encountered them even in negative and in reaction.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. This lecture will focus on the development of an Arsacid tradition of precious metal and ivory vessels and a new Iranian court culture that participated in both the Hellenistic and Iranian ecumenes.

This event will take place in person. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. Please join us as Roberta Casagrande-Kim, ISAW Exhibitions Director, hosts guest curator Vincent Jolivet École Normale Supérieure in a gallery conversation about the recent work and discoveries at the Etruscan necropolis at Norchia. Using the objects on display, Vincent will discuss how his team's excavations have helped us understand more about the Etruscan language and society, and how digital techniques such as drone photography and photogrammetry have allowed us to bring Norchia into the gallery for visitors to experience.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. This lecture focuses on the role of luxury objects and spectacles as deployed by the Seleucids in their conflicts the Antigonids, Ptolemids, Greco-Bactrians, Arsacids and later the Romans.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. This lecture begins with considering the role that luxury material played in creating politically useful subjectivities in the Achaemenid Persian Empire before turning to the formation of a new, competing traditions of luxury under the empire’s rivals and successors.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. The ubiquity of the image on ancient Near Eastern artefacts and its function as a medium for visualizing knowledge has not been a primary concern in ancient Near Eastern studies.

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. This talk outlines the results and ongoing archaeological investigations of KK1’s diverse remains, including ceramic and metallurgical analyses, bio-archaeological and ecological studies, and broader palaeo-hydrological and landscape investigations.