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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2020
This essay, written collectively by the co-editors of the publication Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents (2018), provides an account of the book's conception, institutional backing, and multi-year process of research and editing. The authors reflect in particular on the translational politics that obtain in the global art world and the museum sector as well as the academic study of the modern Middle East.
1 Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents, eds. Anneka Lenssen, Nada Shabout, and Sarah Rogers (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2018). As of April 2020, the volume is available online as a free, downloadable PDF: https://mo.ma/2V3pfUy.
2 Email correspondence, March 30, 2017.
3 On the MoMA's collection, including assessment of gaps and responsibility to fill them, see discussions of the museum's temporary rehang of some galleries in response to the 2017 “Muslim ban” enacted by President Donald Trump, and reviews of its 2019 comprehensive rehang. Shiva Balaghi, “MoMA's Travel Ban Protest Exposes a Legacy of Closeted Modernism,” hyperallergic.com, March 15, 2017; Kirsten Scheid, “Installation Following the Executive Order of January 27, 2017,” H-AMCA, August 2017; Helen Molesworth, “The New Moma,” Artforum, January 2020.
4 In 2007, the year of AMCA's founding, the list of teachable art historical volumes included Karnouk, Liliane, Modern Egyptian Art: The Emergence of a National Style (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Mikdadi, Salwa, ed., Forces of Change: Artists of the Arab World, exh. Cat. (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1994)Google Scholar; Naef, Silvia, A la recherche d'une modernité arabe: l'évolution des arts plastiques en Egypte, au Liban et en Irak (Geneva: Slatkine, 1996)Google Scholar; Ali, Wijdan, Modern Islamic Art: Development and Continuity (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997)Google Scholar; Balaghi, Shiva and Gumpert, Lynn, Picturing Iran: Art, Society and Revolution (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Irbouh, Hamid, Art in the Service of Colonialism: French Art Education in Morocco, 1912–1965 (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shabout, Nada, Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007)Google Scholar. Key articles included Boullata, Kamal, “Artists Re-Member Palestine in Beirut,” Journal of Palestine Studies 32.4 (Summer 2003): 22–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sheehi, Stephen, “Modernism, Anxiety and the Ideology of Arab Vision,” Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture 28.1 (2006): 72–97Google Scholar. Important histories of modern art in North Africa by scholars such as Anissa Bouayed were also available, albeit in French. Finally, the quarterly online journal for the New York cultural platform ArteEast had begun to publish translations; in Winter 2008, Kirsten Scheid and Jessica Winegar put together a feature on Syrian modern artist Louay Kayyali that debuted two translations of his writing (trans. Hiba Morcos). We made grateful use of important Arabic-language studies by Ismail Shammout, Afif Bahnassi, and others in our own work, but could not assign these works because of the language gap.
5 It is worth noting that the College Art Association, our professional body, has written the sentiment that there should be “full, free, equal, and nondiscriminatory access to materials for all qualified art historians” into its Standards for the Practice of Art History document (rev. 2014). In a section titled “Rights of access to information and responsibilities of art historians,” the association vests art historians with the “moral obligation to share the discovery of primary source material with his or her colleagues and serious students.” The scholar retains only material of an interpretive nature – generated by the examination of source material – as intellectual property. The formulation is neither universally shared nor universally applicable, but it does articulate a professional standard for the practice of art history in the United States.
6 Al Said, Shakir Hassan, al-Bayānāt al-Fanniyya fī al-ʿIrāq (Baghdad: Wizārat al-Iʿlām, 1973)Google Scholar.
7 Mostafa Heddaya, “Critical Eye: Doxing the Modern,” Art in America (February 2019).
8 The curatorial duo Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath have produced a number of well-received exhibitions making use of both art and documents include (see, for instance, Tea with Nefertiti: The making of an artwork by the artist, the museum and the public and Art et Liberté: Rupture, War, and Surrealism in Egypt (1938–1948)), as has Morad Montazami (Arabecedaire: Hamed Abdalla and New Waves: Mohamed Melehi and the Casablanca Art School Archives). See also the integration of archival material into Ten Stories, an exhibition of the permanent collection of the Sursock Museum, Beirut. Finally, we noted with interest the inclusion of typescripts and newspaper clippings in the catalogue to the June 2018 sale held by CMOOA (Compagnie Marocaine des Œuvres et Objet d'art) in Casablanca. We draw these examples from the regions of the Middle East and North Africa, but this kind of archival turn may be observed elsewhere as well.
9 See also the parameters for a new research agenda proposed by Scheid, Kirsten in “The Agency of Art and the Study of Arab Modernity,” MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies 7 (Spring 2007): 6–23Google Scholar.