The Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art, organized by Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, is a leading international conference on Islamic art and culture. It is co-sponsored by Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, VCUQatar and the Qatar Foundation. Previous symposia were held in Richmond, Virginia in 2004 and in Doha, Qatar in 2007. The third biennial symposium, And Diverse Are Their Hues: Color in Islamic Art and Culture, will be held in Córdoba, Spain, November 2-4, 2009.
The first two symposia brought together twenty speakers from ten countries to explore a single theme in Islamic art and culture. The speakers came from all walks of scholarly life and have included architects and artists in addition to art historians.
Organizers Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, who share the Hamad bin Khalifa Endowed Chair of Islamic Art at VCU and the Norma Jean Calderwood University Chair of Islamic and Asian Art at Boston College, will deliver the keynote address.
Speakers:
Olga Bush
“Designs Always Polychromed or Gilded”: the Aesthetics of Color in the Alhambra
Maribel Fierro
“The Battle of Colors”: Colors and Their Meaning in the Search for Political Legitimacy in the Islamic West
Samir Mahmoud
Color, Symbolism, and the Mystic Quest: the Spiritual Exegesis of Color in Sufism
Julie Scott Meisami
“I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues”: Depictions of Majnun in Persian Illustrated Manuscripts
Lawrence Nees
Golden Letters on Blue
Bernard O’Kane
Ceramics in or on the Building? The Relationships of Architecture and the Consumer in the Development of Pottery and Tilework
Cheryl Porter
The Role of Tradition, Geography and Economics in the Choice of Artists’ Colors Used for Painting in Manuscripts
Noha Sadek
Colors of Power and Piety in Rasulid Yemen
Michael Schreffler
“Threads of Many Colors”: Islam, America, and the Visual Culture of Conquest
Marianna Shreve Simpson
“A Perfect Red” to “My Name Is Red”: Ahmar, Surkh, and Kirmizi in the History of Islamic Art
Manu P. Sobti & Mohammad Gharipour
The Hues of Paradise – Examining Color Design Layout in the Islamic Garden
Jon Thompson
Some Observations on Color in Carpets
