Diana McDonald, art historian, curator, author, and lecturer.
Thursday, January 23, 2025 – 4:00 p.m.
Botts Hall, Albuquerque Special Collections Library,
423 Central NE, Albuquerque, NM.
Dr. Diana McDonald recently spent a month in Iraq and Kurdistan, traveling to the important archaeological sites that she has studied for many years – the places where cities, farming, and writing first began. She will talk about some recent archaeological discoveries and these ancient cities from the dawn of civilization, including the Biblical Uruk, home to Gilgamesh; Sumerian Ur, home of the best-preserved ziggurat and Royal Cemetery, with its Great Death Pit and fabulous gold artifacts; as well as the splendors of Babylon and the great Assyrian capital of Nimrud. She will comment on the current conditions compared to before the Iraq/Iran war, the US/Iraq war overthrowing Saddam Hussein, and the more recent destruction of ISIS in 2014-19. In Kurdistan, Dr. McDonald visited the remote mountain Temple of Lalish, to which all Yazidi people must make a pilgrimage. She will discuss these sites, the current state of Iraq, and the glittering pilgrimage mosques of the Shia Islam Shrine Cities.
Dr. McDonald has a PhD in Ancient Near Eastern Art History and Archaeology from Columbia University and an AB in Ancient Art History from Harvard. She taught at Columbia, and at Boston College for nearly 18 years. She also worked at the Ancient Near Eastern Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and curated and lectured at The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Emory’s Michael C. Carlos Museum, the Jakarta National Museum in Indonesia, and for private collections. She has been the author or co-author of several books and numerous articles, including: Serpent Imagery in Ancient Near Eastern Pottery; The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad; and Aphrodite and the Gods of Love; a recent article titled “Ishtar, Lions and Love;” and is a Great Courses Professor, with her lecture series, “30 Masterpieces of the Ancient World.”
Preregistration is required.
$15 for AIA Members; $20 for Non-Members; Students under 30 with ID – Free.
Pay online or mail check made out to AIA by January 22nd to: AIA, PO Box 92921, Albuquerque, NM 87199.
