Modern Iranian Art and Architecture in the Shadow of the Classical Persian Past
17-18 May 2018
Christie Room, John Rylands Library, Deansgate
The University of Manchester
I take great pleasure in welcoming you
to the conference ‘Modern Iranian Art and Architecture in the Shadow of the
Classical Persian Past’. Thank
you all for coming, some of you from very far away, from the East as far away
as Iran and from the West, the USA.
We are most fortunate that our venue and
location for this two-day conference is the historic John Rylands Library,
Deansgate in central Manchester. I thank the Librarian and Curators for their
permission to hold it here. The John Rylands Library was opened to the public
on January 1, 1900, endowed by Enriqueta Augustina Rylands in memory of her
husband, John Rylands, the English entrepreneur and philanthropist who died in
1888. Today the John Rylands Library (JRL) is part of The University of
Manchester Library. In this building are housed many thousands of rare
manuscripts, fragments, documents and books. What is most interesting for our
purposes is that it has a collection of nearly a thousand Persian MSS, which
the JRL continues to treasure very highly. There is currently a concerted
effort by the JRL to catalogue, digitise and research this wonderful Persian
collection. There will be a brief opportunity to view some of the beauties of
this collection during the conference.
The conference on Persian and Iranian
art is hosted by the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at the University
of Manchester, where the Department of Middle Eastern Studies has been in existence
since the beginning of the last century: Persian and other Iranian languages
have long been taught here, alongside Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac and
Turkish. In this conference we bring together scholars who are working
internationally in Persian/Iranian art and architecture.
The history of the art and architecture
of Iran is divided into two fields, one much more populated than the other. One
of these is the widely studied historical field with its focus on pre-modern,
medieval and ancient ‘Persian’ art and architecture; the other that of modern
and contemporary ‘Iranian’ art and architecture. There is often little
communication or appreciation between these two fields: modern and contemporary
artists and scholars do reflect on classical art and architecture, but from the
historical side there tends to be considerably less inclination to look into the
modern and contemporary field. Methodological practices also differ: contemporary
art history uses 20th and 21st century theoretical
perspectives, whereas in the historical field, more often than not, historical
and traditional art historical methods are used. Yet, the two fields are
profoundly connected –Persian and Iranian art is by definition one great field:
there has always been a looking back at, and awareness of, the past among
historians of art, and modern and contemporary artists too are rooted in, and
make reference to, the past. It is to be hoped that in this conference we can
talk to one another across disciplinary and area boundaries and make progress
in overcoming a false separation that has divided us in the past.
Aida Foroutan
Sponsors
This conference is supported by a
research grant from the British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS) and the
Iran Heritage Foundation (IHF). For more information on BIPS and grant
opportunities please see https://www.bips.ac.uk/, and
for the IHF http://www.iranheritage.org/.