Saving Iraqi Culture Dr. Nada Shabout Thursday, October 5, 2006 at 7:30 PM



Dr. Nada Shabout, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of North Texas, will discuss the damage inflicted on Iraq’s cultural artifacts by the current war and the need for their restoration. Considered one of the world's leading authorities on contemporary Iraqi art, Dr. Shabout traveled to Iraq in 2003 to construct a list of artworks missing and stolen from the Iraqi Museum of Modern Art which was damaged after the US invasion. There are up to 8,000 pieces of art missing from this Baghdad museum. However, only about 1,300 are accounted for, many of which are badly damaged. She recently received a $10,000 grant from the American Academic Research Institute to continue her research and, as she says, “reconstruct an archive out of nothing.”