"Repercussions" by Amar Dawod, 2011, oil on canvas, 78.75 x 98.4 inches, from the Ibrahimi Collection in Amman, Jordan.

From Baghdad to Bard: UNT Curators Spotlight Pioneering Arab Artists

Curated by Nada Shabout, UNT Regents Professor of Art History, and Tiffany Floyd, UNT lecturer of modern and contemporary art, “All Manner of Experiments: Legacies of the Baghdad Modern Art Group” is now on view at Bard College in New York. The exhibition is the first to contextualize and historicize an essential chapter in Arab modern and contemporary art.

 

Exhibition: “All Manner of Experiments: Legacies of the Baghdad Modern Art Group”
Dates: June 21–Oct. 19, 2025
Venue: Center for Curatorial Studies, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog designed by Hala Al-Ani and published by CCS Bard, featuring essays by exhibition curators Shabout and Floyd and writer and photographer Nabil Salih. The catalog also includes reflections from participating artists, and illustrations of featured works. Download the essay by Nada Shabout and Tiffany Floyd.

This in-depth presentation of the Baghdad Modern Art Group, which was founded in 1951 and remained a creative force through the early 1970s, presents a spirited picture of multiple generations of artists working together to forge a new and distinct aesthetic that captured the dynamism and hope of postcolonial life in Iraq. The exhibition invites audiences to learn about modernism from the vantage point of Iraq — a vibrant site of exchange and influence across West Asia, North Africa and Europe — reflecting on the group’s formation, progression and impact on subsequent generations of artists.

“All Manner of Experiments” combines significant examples of painting, sculpture and drawing from the group with archival material, including newsreel footage, the group’s manifesto, exhibition posters and artist-designed brochures.

The groundbreaking exhibition draws from major collections such as the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates; The Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon; the Farjam Foundation, Dubai, United Arab Emirates; the Ibrahimi Collection, Amman, Jordan, and Baghdad, Iraq; and Qatar Museums / Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar, and from artists and estates.

The Baghdad Modern Art Group was formed after a dynamic period of accelerated change and growth in Iraq following the nation’s liberation from British rule that was from 1920 to 1932. During the 1930s and ’40s, amid ongoing political turbulence, artists began a crucial negotiation between a nascent postcolonial national consciousness and a burgeoning modernism. Iraqi artists were challenged on two intersecting fronts: on the one hand, with the need to construct points of continuity with Iraqi visual history, and on the other, with the call to create new forms of representation capable of expressing a modern existence.

Spanning works from 1946 to 2023, “All Manner of Experiments” focuses on the relationships within the Baghdad Modern Art Group, including teacher-student dynamics, aesthetic experiments, and the contributions of lesser-known members as well as group precedents and peers. The exhibition is organized into a series of experimental narratives that demonstrate membership in the group as not a fixed process, but a flow of people and ideas held together by a common impetus toward material innovation and aesthetic exploration.

Featured Artists

The exhibition is organized at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, by Lauren Cornell, artistic director, with exhibition design by Ian Sullivan, director of exhibitions. Bard College alumnae Zuhra Amini and Truth Murray-Cole contributed the curatorial research and editorial support to the project.

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Exhibition Support

Lead support for “All Manner of Experiments” is provided by the Barjeel Art Foundation, The Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation, the Farjam Foundation, the Ibrahimi Collection and Qatar Museums / Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. Additional lenders are the Dia al-Azzawi Collection and the Hikmat Family Collection.

Major support is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.

Exhibitions at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and the Hessel Museum of Art are made possible with generous support from Lonti Ebers, the Marieluise Hessel Foundation, the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, the Board of Governors of the Center for Curatorial Studies, and the center’s patrons, supporters and friends.