Monthly Archives: November 2016

Dr. Marilyn Jenkins-Madina donates collection to the Aga Khan Documentation Center

Marilyn Jenkins-Madina, Ph.D., Curator Emerita, Department of Islamic Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, has donated her research collection to AKDC@MIT. Her gift includes ca. 4,250 35mm slides, along with some born digital images, from important sites and collections throughout the Middle East and North Africa including, but not limited to: Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, and Iran. Many of the sites she documented have now been lost to time, natural disaster, or war and can only be studied through scholars’ collections such as this. Jenkins-Madina began her long curatorial career at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in […]

Exhibition: José Luis Argüello, AKPIA Posters (2001-2016)

A retrospective of Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT posters designed by José Luis Argüello is on display now in Rotch Library at MIT. Sponsored by AKPIA MIT and AKDC@MIT, with introduction by Professor Nasser Rabbat, this exhibition illustrates José Luis Argüello’s thoughtful and extraordinary posters “that not only visually document the activities of the Aga Khan Program at MIT for the last fifteen years, but also reveal the refined sensibilities of their designer and his evolving mastery of the communicative potential of the art and architecture of the Islamic world.” The exhibition is free and open to […]

Virtual Exhibition: Tangier Then and Now

The exhibition Tangier Then and Now is now available on Archnet. The collection, an expanded version of the exhibit International Tangier on display in Rotch Library through December 27th, contains selected, edited photographs from the collection of glass negatives of the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies, paired with photographs from 1976-1977, and labels with contemporary images.

AKDC@MIT hosts Middle East Librarians Association annual meeting

The Middle East Librarians Association (MELA) Annual Meeting will be held at MIT on 15-16 November 2016; MELA’s vendor fair will take place on 17 November at Boston Marriott Copley Place. Sponsored by the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT, the theme of this year’s meeting is Partnerships: Enhancing Opportunities. The program can be viewed here. Sharon C. Smith, program head of the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT, currently serving as vice president and program chair for this year’s events, will begin her four year term as MELA’s president at the end of the conference. MELA was founded in 1972 to […]

AKDC@MIT Program Head at the Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations

Sharon C. Smith, Ph.D., spoke at the Media in Muslim Contexts: Inventing and Reinventing Identities conference sponsored by the Aga Khan University (International), in the United Kingdom, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations, 3-4 November 2016. There, she presented her paper “The Past Demands an Answer: What Becomes of History in the Digital Era?” exploring the opportunities, constraints, intentions, and consequences–planned and not–of the production, presentation, and dissemination of digital projects about and/or from the Middle East writ large. The conference was simulcasted with campuses in Nairobi and Karachi.

AKDC@MIT announces holiday hours

Generosity is the disposition of the dwellers of Paradise. The Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT will close for the Thanksgiving (USA) holiday beginning Monday, 21 November. We will reopen on Monday, 28 November. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.