Curator Lila Abu Loghd, a world-renowned Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, led a group of 15 CHSS students and several faculty members through an exhibition, entitled ‘On the Move', to discuss its content, challenges, and potential. The guided tour was organized by the Department of Middle Eastern Studies (MESD) as a special visit for its students to view the international exhibition at the National Museum of Qatar (N.M.O.Q.).
The exhibition focuses on pastoralists and nomadic communities in Central Sahara, Qatar, and Mongolia. It displays a stunning array of objects, historical representations, and archival footage from these regions. It highlights the progress of cultural forms – as well as the meaningful social relationships – created and maintained by pastoralists, who move with the herds they tend. In a world of overuse of natural resources and great social inequalities, the exhibition aims to invite reflection on what contemporary society can learn from these pastoral communities and their life experiences.
Highlighting the goal, Dr. Sophie Richter-Devroe, Associate Professor in the Women, Society and Development Program at CHSS, the leader of the student tour, said: “Our visit to the exhibition and the discussion allowed students to learn more about nomadic and semi-nomadic life in Qatar and beyond, and engaged them in reflections on complex questions of representation in cultural production and wider museum politics.”
After touring the exhibition, the students attended the Curator Talk with presentations by Professor Abu-Lughod, and two other leading experts, Dr. Anja Fischer, University of Vienna, and Dr. Elizabeth Turk, University of Cambridge.