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Cost: Free; registration required. Throughout history, many authors have recounted Alexander the Great’s deeds and quests, real or fictional. In Iran, Alexander is known as Iskandar, and because of his Persian ancestry he is recognized as a legitimate ruler. In Europe, he is a model of virtue and piety for Christian rulers. In both traditions, Alexander is a relentless adventurer who journeys to the end of the world in an unsuccessful quest for immortality. Join curator Simon Rettig and professor Markus Cruse as they explore Alexander’s centrality in the cultures of the global late Middle Ages, focusing on fourteenth-century illustrated manuscripts of Firdawsi’s Shahnama (Book of kings) and copies of the Romance of Alexander from the contemporaneous Latin West.
This program is held in conjunction with the exhibition An Epic of Kings: The Great Mongol Shahnama, on view from September 21, 2024, to January 12, 2025.
Dr. Simon Rettig is the associate curator for the arts of the Islamic World at NMAA. Since he joined the museum in 2012, Rettig has curated several exhibitions, including Nasta‘liq: The Genius of Persian Calligraphy (2014), The Prince and the Shah: Royal Portraits from Qajar Iran (2018), and An Epic of Kings: The Great Mongol Shahnama (September 21, 2024–January 12, 2025). His current projects include a major exhibition on the history of Persian painting and a monograph on the Freer Gallery of Art Collection's celebrated manuscript of Nizami’s Khusraw u Shirin from the Jalayirid period.
Dr. Markus Cruse is associate professor of French in the School of International Letters and Cultures at Arizona State University. His research and teaching are driven by an interest in the relationship between textual production, material culture, and transcultural contact in the global Middle Ages. Professor Cruse has published on topics including the medieval legend of Alexander the Great, manuscript illumination, medieval theater, the senses in medieval culture, heraldry, and the history of color. His book The Mongol Archive in Late Medieval France: Texts, Objects, Encounters, 1221–1422 will be published in February 2025 with Cornell University Press. He is currently writing a book on the medieval origins of French colonialism.
Image: Taynush before Iskandar and the visit to the Brahmans, folio from the Great Mongol Shahnama (Book of kings) by Firdawsi (d.1020), National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Collection, Purchase—Smithsonian Unrestricted Trust Funds, Smithsonian Collections Acquisition Program, and Dr. Arthur M. Sackler, S1986.105.1.
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1050 Independence Ave SW, Washington D.C., DC, United States, Washington, District of Columbia 20560
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