Join artists, researchers, and art professionals for a symposium that uses the exhibition Rayyane Tabet / Alien Property as a starting point to challenge the concept of the universal museum—a place to see the whole world under one roof—and its relationship to material and digital cultural heritage.

Session 2: Institutional Frameworks and “Capturing” Readymade Culture
This panel explores the architectural, art historical, and archaeological narratives that arise from certain kinds of excavations, both physical and digital. Panelists think critically about institutions and the ways they have “captured” cultural heritage, whether through images, war, plunder, art markets, black markets, or digital colonialism. Panelists also discuss representations of cultural heritage through the lens of Orientalism, how assessments of damage, destruction, and “at-risk” valuations are made, and how histories are lost or rewritten through the circulation and display of tangible cultural heritage, starting with a geographic focus on the Middle East.

Speakers
Jananne Al-Ani, artist and Senior Lecturer in Photography, University of the Arts, London
Nasser Rabbat, Aga Khan Professor and Director, Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Trinidad Rico, Associate Professor, Department of Art History, Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies, Rutgers University
Moderated by Saima Akhtar, independent scholar

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