Day one of the fourth biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art is currently underway in Doha, Qatar at the Museum of Islamic Art, designed by I.M. Pei, where twelve speakers are discussing specific objects in the Museum’s collection.
The title of this Symposium is God Is Beautiful; He Loves Beauty: The Object in Islamic Art and Culture, and the keynote address was given by Paul Goldberger, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author for The New Yorker, who discussed the Museum building as a work of Islamic art.
The following speakers read their papers today:
François Déroche: Of Volume and Skins
Julia Gonnella: The Stucco of Samarra
Antonio Vallejo Triano: Architectural Decoration in the Umayyad Caliphate of al-Andalus: The example of Madinat al-Zahra
Emilie Savage-Smith: The Stars in the Bright Sky: The Most Authoritative Copy of ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi’s 10th-century Guide to the Constellations
Ruba Kana’an: A Biography of a 13th-century Brass Ewer: the Social and Economic Lives of Mosul Metalwork
Kjeld von Folsach: As Precious as Gold – Some Woven Textiles from the Mongol Period
Here are images from today’s events:
Images © Markus Elblaus, VCUQatar
