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Category Archives: Staff News

IAP Presentation: Spies, Pirates, and Atlas Lions: US-Moroccan Relations through the lens of the Tangier American Legation

AKDC@MIT is organizing a presentation, “Spies, Pirates, and Atlas Lions: US-Moroccan Relations through the lens of the Tangier American Legation,” on Tuesday, January 19, 2021, 4 to 5:30 pm. The lecture is part of the Independent Activities Period (IAP) offerings of the MIT Libraries. The old American Legation in the medina (walled city) of Tangier, Morocco holds a number of distinctions. It is the first property the United States owned abroad, it is the only overseas site on the National Register of Historic Places, and it was an active diplomatic structure longer than any other diplomatic presence of the US […]

Nur Sobers-Khan appointed Program Head

We are thrilled to share the announcement that Nur Sobers-Khan has been appointed Program Head for the Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT). Reporting to Emilie Hardman, Head of the Libraries Distinctive Collections (DDC), the Program Head is a critical leadership position responsible for stewarding and developing collections, services, and programs to support the information needs of the faculty, students, and researchers of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture (AKPIA) in MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning. It also provides oversight of Archnet in partnership with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and engages in other innovative collection […]

Endangered Heritage: An Online Panel of the A3-Archnet Collaborative

IMPORTANT UPDATE: REGISTRATION FOR THIS SESSION IS NOW CLOSED.  The event is at capacity.  If your registration was successfully processed, you will soon receive instructions on how to join.  July 27, 2020 The A3-Archnet Collaborative for the Documentation of Africa’s built heritage will hold an online public panel on “Endangered Heritage,” July 31 at 16:30-18:30 WAT/11:30-13:30 EDT.  The panel will include three presenters known for their work in cultural heritage preservation: Ṣọlá Akíntúndé, Founder Trustee, WASCHTrust (West Africa Shared Cultural Heritage Trust); Kuukuwa Manful,  Principal Investigator for the Accra Archive: and Raj Yudhishthir Isar, Director of the Aga Khan Trust […]

Books and Bites displays new books, zines, and other media in Rotch Library

Art, Architecture and Urban Studies and Planning Librarian Kai Alexis Smith and Matt Saba, Visual Resources Librarian in AKDC, joined forces to host the first Books and Bites at Rotch Library. This event welcomed visitors to peruse featured new books, zines, and ephemera while also enjoying snacks. Among the highlights were recent additions to the library’s ephemera collection including the music album from the Lithuanian Pavilion, the winning international pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale; select items from the new zine collection which included items collected from the 2018 Feminist Zinefest and the 2019 Black in Design Conference at Harvard […]

AKDC Program Head Participates in Regional Conference on Cultural Heritage Protection for Religious Communities

The Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, with the support of the U.S. Department of State and the partnership of the Rabita Mohammadia des Oulémas (Mohammadia Association of Ulema)recently organized the “First Regional Conference on Cultural Heritage Protection for Religious Communities” October 3-4 in Rabat, Morocco.  AKDC Program Head Michael Toler was one of approximately 100 experts and government officials from Morocco, the US, Europe, and multiple countries in North Africa and the Sahel regions; as well as representatives of other International Organizations, NGOs and other organizations involved in the preservation of cultural heritage, who were invited to […]

AKDC Program Head to Speak at the Gulf Architecture Project Conference in the Qatar National Library

AKDC Program Head and Archnet Content Manager Michael Toler will present the on the collections and activities of the Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT), Saturday, October 12, at 9 am, in Auditorium of the Qatar National Library (QNL), Doha, Qatar. Toler’s presentation, “Gulf Architecture in the Archives of the Aga Khan DocumentationCenter, MIT Libraries: Stories and Lessons,” in a Keynote of the Gulf Architecture Conference and Exhibition, organized by the QNL in collaboration with Liverpool University’s School of Architecture, Qatar University’s Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, and Ibrahim Jaidah, CEO and Chief Architect, Arab Engineering Bureau. The […]

AKDC at the 1st Annual Conference & Exhibition of Electronic Resources & Libraries – Middle East Chapter

The 1st Annual Conference & Exhibition of Electronic Resources & Libraries – Middle East Chapter (ER&L-Middle East) takes place October 9-10 at the InterContinental Hotel in Festival City, Dubai, UAE. AKDC@MIT will be represented in the vendor fair by Interim Program Head and Archnet Co-Director, Dr. Michael A. Toler.  He will be demonstrating Archnet and other AKDC online presences in the ER&L – Middle East Exhibition. Stop by with your questions, comments, and suggestions about Archnet or any other AKDC services. I would be particularly interested in ideas for collaboration that might help us provide Archnet users with more comprehensive […]

Rifat Chadirji Archive includes drawings of his 1966 building destroyed in January 2019

In this post Betsy Baldwin, Collections Archivist in AKDC@MIT, reports on some drawings recently discovered in the archive of pioneering Iraqi architect Rifat Chadirji. A recent set of original architectural drawings discovered within the Rifat Chadirji Archive include drawings of the National Insurance Company Building that he designed for Mosul. Constructed in 1966, this building was put to a shockingly horrible use in 2017 when ISIS used it to execute people it decided had broken Islamic law, most notably young gay men who were thrown from it to their deaths. After the recapture of Mosul, restoration was considered. Unfortunately, the […]

Matt Saba speaks at conference hosted by the Sorbonne Université and Musée du Louvre

Matt Saba, Visual Resources Librarian for Islamic Architecture, AKDC@MIT, will participate in an international conference in Paris on October 3-4. The conference, hosted by the Sorbonne Université and Musée du Louvre, focuses on Islamic heritage through the lens of scholarly archives, and features a host of papers using archival collections to shed new light on questions in Islamic art and archaeology. Saba will speak on the subject of the historiography of Islamic architecture through the lens of the archives of Ernst Herzfeld, a German archaeologist whose archive is divided between a number of European and North American institutions. The conference […]

AKDC Program Head to present in a symposium on The Architecture of Migration

Michael Toler will present on “International Tangier: Stagnation and Growth in the 20th Century” in a Symposium on “The Architecture of Migration, Clues of Transcultural Exchanges in the Mediterranean Built Environment,” July 16th-17th at the Leicester School of Architecture, De Montfort University in the UK. The symposium is organized by Beniamino Polimeni, a researcher, designer and an architectural conservator who was a 2013 postdoctoral fellow in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic architecture at MIT, and Yasser Megahed is a Lecturer at Leicester School of Architecture, UK. Full organizer biographies are available on the conference website. The symposium comes at […]