Nada Shabout

Nada Shabout is an Assistant Professor of Art History at the University
of North Texas teaching
Arab visual culture and Islamic art. She holds a PhD from the University of Texas
at Arlington
(1999), a MA in the Humanities, a BA in Architecture, and a BFA. Known as one
of the world’s leading authorities on contemporary Iraqi art, she has dedicated
herself to documenting artwork missing and stolen from the Iraqi Museum of Modern
Art in Baghdad, damaged by fire and looting after bombings in 2003. Her book,
Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics was just released by the University of Florida Press, 2007. In addition to
curating the traveling exhibition, Dafatir: Contemporary Iraqi Book Art,
Shabout has published numerous articles on modern and contemporary Iraqi art
with a focus on the relationship between visual production and the politics of
identity. Her current project is Recovering Iraq’s
Modern Heritage: Constructing and Digitally Documenting the Collection of the
former Saddam Center for the Arts. She has received
two TAARII fellowships in support of her work on Iraqi art, and a Fulbright to Jordan to
conduct research for her book on contemporary art in the Arab World. She is
also the founding president of the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art
from the Arab World, Iran
and Turkey
(AMCA).