LADAN AKBARNIA
Dr. Ladan Akbarnia is Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art at The San Diego Museum of Art (2019–present). A specialist in Islamic visual culture, her research, exhibitions, and publications address cross-cultural transmissions in Iran, Central Asia, and South Asia; Sufism; Persianate drawings; contemporary art; and methodologies of museum display. Her current exhibition, Wonders of Creation: Art, Science, and Innovation in the Islamic World, on view at SDMA until 5 January 2025 and traveling to the McMullen Museum of Art from 1 February–1 June 2025, was funded generously by the Getty Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, with support from several other organizations and individual donors. Since joining SDMA in 2019, she has organized several exhibitions and displays, including India: Paintings from the San Diego Museum of Art (Speed Museum of Art, Louisville, 2024 and CentroCentro, Madrid, 2023); A Dogon Figure from Mali: Bridge to the Spirit World (2021), co-curated with Dr. Denise Rogers; Lisa Ross: Elegy to a Uyghur Homeland (2022); and ongoing rotating displays of works from the Edwin Binney 3rd Collection (Pearls from the Ocean of Contentment, 2021–present). Previously, she was Assistant Keeper & Curator of Islamic Collections and lead curator for the Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World at The British Museum (2010–19); Hagop Kevorkian Associate Curator of Islamic Art at the Brooklyn Museum (2007–10), where she organized a reinstallation of the Islamic collection and Light of the Sufis: The Mystical Arts of Islam (2009–10); and Executive Director of the Iran Heritage Foundation in London (2009–10). She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University.
This illustrated talk will explore the story and vision behind The San Diego Museum of Art’s major temporary exhibition, Wonders of Creation: Art, Science, and Innovation in the Islamic World, on view through January 5, 2025. Wonders of Creation explores intersections of art and science in Islamic intellectual and visual culture from the 8th century to the present, using the lens of “wonder” as defined by an influential 13th-century Islamic cosmography describing the universe. Written in Arabic and Persian by Zakariyya ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini, The Wonders of Creation and the Rarities of Existence (from which the exhibition takes its title) catalogues the marvels of the universe in a single, richly illustrated book. The exhibition features over 200 works through the framework of Qazwini’s text, including manuscripts, luster dishes, magic bowls, scientific instruments, architectural elements, and contemporary art. Following the cosmography’s narrative through the celestial and terrestrial realms, topics such as astronomy, astrology, natural history, alchemy, medicine, and geometry are explored through objects from Spain, North Africa, the Arab lands, and Iran to Central, South, and Southeast Asia and the modern diaspora. After an overview of the exhibition with details of selected works representing the narrative and conceptual structure, this talk will consider the framework of the exhibition as a methodology for representing Islamic art and material culture on a wider scale.
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