Nada Shabout, associate professor of art history and director of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Institute at UNT, is the co-curator of the inaugural exhibit of the new Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, which opens Dec. 30 in Doha, Qatar. The museum,  “mathaf” in Arabic, is dedicated to showcasing modern and contemporary Arab art from the 1840s to today. The exhibit curated by Shabout and Al-Khudairi, “Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art,” is a survey of more than 100 artists. “Sajjil” roughly translates as the act of recording.

Shabout participated in a series of art conversations between artists and art practitioners in Beirut and Marrakech this fall, on a press tour that also included Cairo, London and Paris, among other cities. She is known as one of the world’s leading authorities on contemporary Iraqi art.