Salwa mikdadi biography of williams syndrome

The Salwa Mikdadi papers consist of correspondence, biographical documents, photographs, and audio- and video-recordings, documenting the lives and works of modern Arab artists in the Middle East and in the diaspora, as well as materials that document museum exhibitions of the works of Arab artists in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.

Much of the materials originated from the activities of Mikdadi, an art historian and curator, as well as the non-profit organization that she founded, the International Council on Women Artists, whose aim was to promote and make more widely accessible the works of modern Arab artists. Salwa Mikdadi is an independent curator and Associate Professor of the Practice of Art History at New York University Abu Dhabi, where she researches and teaches courses in the history of modern and contemporary art in the Arab world and offers courses in museum curatorial practice.

Mikdadi is the daughter of Palestinian historian Darwish al-Miqdadi and educator Rabiha al-Dajani, and grew up in Kuwait, where her father was assistant director of education for the nation until shortly before his death in She earned a bachelor's of arts from the American University of Beirut, where she first became interested in the works of modern Arab women artists, such as Saloua Raouda Choucair and Jumana el-Husseini.

Upon her immigration to the United States in , she was interested in curating exhibitions about the works of such artists, but found instead that she was often asked to create exhibitions about traditional forms of art associated with women, such as embroidery and costume.

Salwa mikdadi biography of williams syndrome: in Architecture. Permanent Temporariness

Her first significant opportunity to stage a comprehensive exhibition of modern women artists from the Arab world came when she was contacted by the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC in Out of these initial contacts came the exhibition "Forces of Change: Artists of the Arab World," which opened at that museum in February , before subsequently travelling to other venues in Chicago, Miami, Atlanta, and Northern California.

In the meantime, Mikdadi had realized that there was a dearth of information on Arab artists, and in researching and assembling information for the exhibition, joined with other scholars and curators to found the International Council for Women in the Arts ICWA. This non-profit organization, based at Mikdadi's home in Lafayette, California from to , had as its purpose the creation of a substantial database of information about Arab women artists that could be freely shared with museums and scholars.

In collecting a sizable amount of color slides, printed images, brochures from exhibitions, correspondence with artists and other related materials, they soon established themselves as a clearinghouse for publishers, authors, and others seeking images of such art that they could use for illustrations, book cover designs, and other purposes.

During these years, Mikdadi also frequently consulted on projects in the Middle East, in particular in Jordan and Palestine, and curated the first Palestine Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in