Massumeh Farhad, chief curator and curator of Islamic art at the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution will present the annual Semans Lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 24, at the Nasher Museum of Art.
Farhad brings her expertise to a discussion of the exhibition Doris Duke's Shangri La: Architecture, Landscape, and Islamic Art. Her talk, "From Mecca to Shangri La: Islamic Art in Context," will focus on the Islamic textiles, ceramics, jewelry, furniture and architectural elements that Doris Duke handpicked for her sprawling, oceanfront estate in Honolulu.
Since 1995, Farhad has curated numerous exhibitions on Islamic art, including Style and Status: Imperial Costumes from Ottoman Turkey (2005-2006), Tsars and the East: Gifts from Turkey and Iran in the Moscow Kremlin (2009), and Falnama: The Book of Omens (2009). She has also written extensively on 17th-century Persian painting. She earned a PhD in art history from Harvard University.
The free talk is open to the public.