In a forum at Kresge Auditorium last night, scholars discussed a side of Iraq rarely covered in the nightly news: the rich artistic history of the country.

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Jason Chuang

University of Chicago professor McGuire Gibson spoke yesterday about the pillaging of Iraqi musuems after the initial U.S. military invasion in Iraq in 2003. Gibson is co-author of “Lost Heritage: Antiquities Stolen from Iraq’s Regional Museums,” which exposed the problem of looting Iraqi art after the first Gulf War in the early 1990s.

“While we all hear about Iraq in the news, we don’t hear that Iraq had a thriving culture,” said Nada Shabout, a professor of Arab visual and Islamic art at the University of North Texas.

As the third out of five conversations in the “Iraq: Reframe: Iraq’s Lost National Treasures” series, last night’s event aimed to reframe popular conceptions of Iraq with a focus on the arts.

McGuire Gibson, an archaeologist from the University of Chicago, spoke alongside Shabout at the event, while Stanford’s Iranian Studies Program Director Abbas Milani served as moderator.

Iraq was once the center of Mesopotamia, one of the world’s earliest civilizations, and the allure of its ancient art exists through the present. However, Shabout fears that the violence in the Middle Eastern state today will overshadow Iraqi art and its storied history.

“In a couple of years, it is going to be difficult to talk about Iraqi art at all,” she said.

Since the start of the Iraq War in 2003, more than 15,000 valuable items have been stolen from the National Museum of Iraq. Looters have stolen a variety of historical artifacts, often receiving $50,000-plus for each item on the black market.

In last night’s presentation, Shabout emphasized the devastating impact of the Iraq War on the fate of Iraqi art. Because of the volatile political situation in Iraq and the violent aftermath of the initial occupation, many Iraqi artists have either been killed or fled the country.

Indeed, Shabout said that the art academy in Iraq “has almost no faculty to teach anymore.”

Gibson, a leading authority on ancient Mesopotamia, criticized the U.S. government for failing to protect the National Museum of Iraq from destruction.

“I, along with others, went to the Pentagon in the months preceding the war and warned that sites would be looted if Baghdad [were] taken,” he said.

However, according to Gibson, the U.S. military arrived five days after the museum had already been ransacked, and even today, hundreds of archaeological sites are still being looted.

“There is not an archaeological site in the world that is safe,” Gibson said. “This is the problem — it’s not just the loss of Iraq’s treasuries, but the loss of treasures even [in the United States].”

In an event attended mostly by older adults, there seemed to be a gloomy aura hanging over the audience.

“This is maybe the most depressing talk I have ever attended in my life,” Milani said.

Mohammad Al-Moumen ‘09, a student from Iraq, was glad to see the often-neglected issue of Iraqi art discussed in such a forum.

“Although there are probably more important things to worry about, like poverty-stricken people and innocent civilians dying, it is still important not to forget about this,” Al-Moumen said. “Art is an important part of Iraqi culture and identity.”