Maryam Athari

Maryam Athari is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities (2024–2025) specializing in twentieth-century global art with a focus on Middle Eastern and Iranian art. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History from Northwestern University (2024) complemented by certificates in Middle Eastern Studies and Critical Theory.

Her educational foundation centers on Northwestern University’s doctoral program where she integrated art historical methodology with interdisciplinary frameworks from Middle Eastern Studies and Critical Theory. This tripartite academic training underpins her transnational research approach.

Athari’s research interrogates mid-twentieth-century Iranian art through transregional lenses, examining artistic dialogues between Iran, the United States, Europe, and East Asia. Her project Nodes of Connectivity: Jahani and Iranian Modernism’s Worldly Belonging excavates the Farsi concept of jahani (being situated in world-space) to dismantle state-centric narratives of Iranian modernism. She demonstrates how artists resisted the Shah’s ethno-nationalist cultural policies by forging non-hierarchical connections across geopolitical divides, emphasizing sensory engagement with themes of transience, corporeality, and the mundane through innovative material practices.

Her scholarly recognition includes:

• AMCA’s 2020 Rhonda A. Saad Prize for best paper in Modern and Contemporary Arab Art

Athari leverages extensive curatorial experience from the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, National Gallery of Art, and Menil Collection—enhanced by Center for Curatorial Leadership training—to bridge academic research and museum practice. The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship currently supports her transformative work on Iranian modernism, with publications appearing in Herfeh:Honarmand, CAA.reviews, and forthcoming in Third Text.