Princeton Institute for Advanced Study: Emine Fetvaci

The first art history seminar + dinner at the IAS will be on October 12. The speaker is Emine Fetvaci (Boston University), currently a member at the IAS. The title of her talk is :”Album Making in Seventeenth Century Istanbul: The Sultan and the City.”

The talk will focus on the representations of the city of Istanbul in an album made for the Ottoman sultan Ahmed I (r. 1603-1617) by his courtier Vassal Kalender (d. 1616), a renowned artist of paper-joinery and illumination.  The many portrait-like depictions of urban types and the genre scenes that fill the pages of this eclectic and multivalent album will be examined in the context of changing relationships between court life and popular culture, cross-cultural exchange, urban growth and apocalyptic anxiety.

As usual, it will start at 6 pm in the small auditorium of the West Building (ground floor);  around 7:30 pm, those who want to go on with the discussion will move to the dining hall where we’ll share a buffet dinner.

Please RSVP to Yve-Alain Bois by Tuesday October 11 at noon if you want to attend the dinner, and if so bring with you $25 in cash or check per person (you are welcome to bring other guests).