Announcing the Winner of the Salwa Mikdadi Research Award | AMCA | Association for Modern + Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran + Turkey

AMCA is thrilled to announce Rachel Winter as the recipient of the inaugural Salwa Mikdadi Research Award.

Rachel Winter, Assistant Curator at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, is currently researching Nabil Kanso’s (b. 1940, Lebanon-d. 2019, Atlanta) six decades of visual thinking around the Lebanese Civil War in preparation for an exhibition at the MSU Broad Art Museum from February–July 2025 that commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Lebanese Civil War. Tentatively titled Lebanon, the exhibition centers on the monumental painting Scorching Sparks, which has never been shown before. Other accompanying paintings, sketchbooks, photographs, and videos will illuminate how the artist saw his estranged home in Lebanon and ruminated on the complexities of the Lebanese Civil War. During her research trip to Atlanta, Winter will work with the Estate of Nabil Kanso to not only study Scorching Sparks, but to explore the breadth of the artist’s work and review archival material, such as journals and photographs, that help illuminate the artist’s thinking on home, war, and global injustice.

The award was initiated by AMCA in 2022 in recognition of the pioneering work of Professor Salwa Mikdadi. Makdadi’s contributions have been instrumental in the development of the field, culminating in the establishment of al-Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art at NYUAD. With the establishment of this award, AMCA seeks to highlight the importance of archival research and its dissemination while honoring the legacy of Makdadi’s career. The research travel grant ($1000) aims to help scholars realize archival research they are not otherwise able to undertake