ABOUT

MUSEUMVIEWS – Playhouse of the Muses was founded in 2003 by American curator, producer & museologist Homa Nasab is a museologist, curator & producer who loves art but loves film even more.

MUSEUMVIEWS – Playhouse of the Muses is a growing community of filmmakers and performing & visual arts professionals.

 

Homa T. Nasab is an American curator, producer & museologist who divides her time between NYC, Boston, Atlanta, and South Florida. She holds graduate degrees in museology (Harvard University); 19th-20th century fine arts and their institutional histories (The Courtauld Institute); and, histories of museums & collecting (Oxford University). Nasab wrote her unpublished doctoral dissertation on the comparative history of museums and emerging markets circa 1870′s-1940′s, with the Middle East as her case study.

During the past twenty years, Nasab has visited, explored and recorded the collections of well over two thousand museums and galleries of art, science and archaeology, on three continents (America, Europe & Asia). She continues to chronicle her museological inquiries by creating a growing library of more than 10,000 videos and photographs as well as a number of published and unpublished theses on aspects of modern visual arts, their collectors & patrons and related institutional developments. Her investigations and travels have contributed to the formation of a solid network among international artists, curators, museum professionals & collectors.

In the early 1990’s, Nasab studied at the prestigious Stella Adler Conservatory, with the late Stella Adler, and worked as a production assistant on a number of independent film and theatre projects, in New York City. Later in the decade, she pursued film and video studies with John Gianvito, the former Curator of the Harvard Film Archives and a recipient of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture (2001).

The basis of Nasab’s curatorial work, academic studies and personal interests in visual arts are extensively rooted in early modern theatre (Stella Adler’s Conservatory); film & sculpture (UMass Boston); museology (Harvard); 19th-20th century fine arts and institutions (The Courtauld); and, histories collecting (Oxford). Nasab’s extensive curatorial, advisory and academic experiences have given Nasab a solid grounding in the aesthetics, economics and management of public and private art collections on a global scale, with particular focus on the relationship between private and public collectors.

Whether researching: Sol Le Wit and Mark di Suvero’s monumental sculptures (Arts on the Point, Boston); the Baroness Marie-Thérèse Ullens de Schooten Archive (Aga Khan Program for Islamic Arts, Harvard); or, Albert C. Barnes’ iconic collection of modern art (The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia), Nasab has always held a global and comparative perspective on the development of aesthetic forms and trends.

Since 2003, Homa Nasab has served as an Arts and Cultural Adviser to a number of public (institutional) and private collectors in the United States, Great Britain and the Middle East.

Nasab is writing and producing a television series on visual arts and their institutions, including museums, the art market and academia. 

Homa can be reached at museumviews@gmail.com

.

Field Experience

Have visited, studied & compiled a photographic archive of some fifteen thousand photographs from more than two thousand museums & art galleries in the United States, Western Europe & the Middle East, including: France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Iran, The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States… among other places.

.

Multi-Media Experience

Founder and Editor, MuseumViews, 2003-Present

Producer, Interviewer: In Conversation with…[VIDEO Series], 2013-Ongoing

A Trilogy of Short Films based on Frank J Cunningham‘s Poems on arts & cultural institutions on Nantucket, In Post-Production

Untitled Documentary on Pin Up Art, In Pre-Production

Writer & Producer, Untitled Pilot for a Docu-Series on Collectors & Collecting, 2010- present, NYC, USA

Writer & Producer, Pilot episodes on Museums & Collectors, Summer, 2002 – Arts Nantucket, Channel 17, Nantucket, Massachusetts, USA

Writer, Director, Editor, “Jennifer Ricci: Portrait of a Poet,” Video Documentary, 1999

Writer, Director, Editor, “Waiting for Van Gogh,” Video Documentary, 1999

Artist, Writer, Director, Editor, “16 mm Experimental Animation,” 1999

.

Select List of Invited Lectures & Curatorial Projects

“The Riddle of the Barnes Foundation,” Nantucket Historical Association, September 2007

“The Great Blockbuster (1931) at the Royal Academy of Art,” State of the Art, collecting art and national formation c. 1800-2000 Conference, National Maritime Museum, London, UK, July 17-19, 2007

Organizer, & Co-convener with Dr. Marius Kwint, Comparative Museology Conference, “Museum formation in China, the Middle East, the Balkans and in Diaspora,” Department of History of Art, Oxford University, UK, June 8, 2007

& Presenter, “The Foundational History of Museums in Developing Countries”

Graduate Seminars – Khalili Research Centre, University of Oxford, UK

“A history of The National Museum of Iran,” April 23, 2007

“National Museum of Afghanistan: An aesthetic history,” One Book One Island (Afghan Awareness Season), Nantucket Historical Association, Nantucket, USA, March 25, 2007

“Nationalist Cultural Policy and Museum Formation, a Comparative View,” History of Collecting Seminars, Department of Art History - University of Oxford, UK, February 14, 2007

“Musing the Nation: Creation of Museums in the Middle east (1878-1941),” Academic Seminars Series, St. Catherine’s College – University of Oxford, UK, January, 2007

“Nationalism and Formation of Museums,” Middle Eastern Studies Graduate Seminars – University of Oxford, UK, Spring 2006

Convener of Departmental Seminars, Department of History of Art, University of Oxford, UK, Trinity, 2003

Curator – Rolande Guillosou, Alliance Française – Boston, MA, 2001

*Created 70 Limited-Edition Artist’s Book with Celebrated French Poet Robert Marteau & Documentary Artist Maria Reggiani

Arts-on-the-Point Sculpture Park - University of Massachusetts Boston

Researcher – Grant Proposal Research : National Endowment for Humanities, 1999- 2000

Harvard University Fine Arts Library – Boston, MA

Academic Assistant – Visual Collections, 1997- 1999

.

Unpublished Theses

“Foundational History of Museums in Iran c. 1870-1940: A Comparative Study,” Doctoral Dissertation, Oriental Institute, Oxford University, 2009

“Who is Sol Lewitt?” Research Paper, Department of History of Art, Oxford University, 2003

“The Reciprocal Influence between Albert C. Barnes and John Dewey,” MSt. Thesis, Department of History of Art, Oxford University, 2003

“6000 Calvin Coolidges, The Riddle of the Barnes Foundation,” Research Paper, Department of History of Art, Oxford University, 2002

“French Nineteenth-Century Orientalist Landscapes,” MA Thesis, the Courtauld Institute of Art, 2001

“Museum of Fetish,” Final Thesis, Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies, Harvard University, 2000

“Pierre Auguste Renoir in Algeria, 1881-82,” Honors Paper, University of Massachusetts Boston, 1999