HIAA Faculty Spotlight!  

Professor Margaret Graves spent much of her 2025/26 sabbatical in residence at the esteemed Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University working on her new book project. While there she gave a presentation titled “The Limits of Art History: Void and Impress in Islamic Art" for their History of Art Seminar. 

Then in July, Professor Graves traveled to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London to chair a panel on “New Approaches to Islamic Art Collections” at the V&A’s conference The Islamic Art Museumscape: The Jameel Gallery 20th Anniversary Conference. Participants from around the world gathered in London to discuss initiatives they are conducting in Egypt, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Portugal, Germany, the UK and the USA.

And finally, Graves' recent publication "Invisible Hands: Fabrication, Forgery and Art of Islamic Ceramics" received a glowing review by Tom Hardwick in Apollo Magazine, describing her book as “a thoughtful and intelligent book on a subject that the art world, from dealers to curators, normally does its best to downplay. What actually happened to the artefacts we see in museums before they went on display? (Graves) blends contemporary investigation and 19th- and 20th-century descriptions of restorers’ workshops and dealers’ showrooms to give a detailed and engaging account of how objects were excavated, bought, restored and sold.”