Persepolis 2.0

Aleppo, Syria, Preserves the Past by Enhancing the Present – NYTimes.com. But this quiet plaza is the centerpiece of one of the most far-thinking preservation projects in the Middle East, one that places as much importance on people as it does on the buildings they live in. The project encompasses the rebuilding of crumbling streets and the upgrading of city services, the restoration of hundreds of houses in the historic Old City, plans for a 42-acre park in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods and the near-decade-long restoration of the Citadel itself, whose massive walls dominate the skyline of Aleppo,…

The Ismaili: Video: The Islamic impact on American arts. Dr Hussein Rashid delivered a lecture titled Everyday Art: An Islamic Impact on American Art on 13 February 2011 at the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In the talk, Dr Rashid highlights Islamic influences on popular art in America — from architecture and popular media to poetry and writing — by the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his From Persian of Hafiz II, to Toni Morrison’s portrayal of Muslim characters in her novel Beloved. The lecture followed two exhibitions on Islamic calligraphy at the museum.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Contemporary Iranian Art from the Permanent Collection. This exhibition features seven works by three generations of Iranian artists—Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (b. 1924), Parviz Tanavoli (b. 1937), Y.Z. Kami (b. 1956), Shirin Neshat (b. 1957), Afruz Amighi (b. 1974), and Ali Banisadr (b. 1976)—four of whom live and work in the United States, while two continue to work in Iran. Despite their diverse modes of expression, these artworks reflect an intrinsic connection with Iran and address issues of identity, political and social concerns, gender, nostalgia, and cultural pride.