I wish I could take the credit for these beauties! But K has discovered baking, and has taken to it rather successfully - a wonderful stem ginger cake, a dark chocolate and beetroot cake, some soda bread, and now a batch of hot cross buns in time for Easter! Delicious! Here they are in progress...
Sorry for the deeper than usual radio silence. This year, though barely 3 months old, has already been horribly busy. The recent travelling has a lot to do with it, as well as preparing for those trips. After Spain, I had a couple of days to turn myself around and go to New York - another place I spent time in 2008, when I was there for 6 weeks on a curatorial exchange at the Met, which was fabulous. I was back this time to take our loans to an exhibition on Byzantium & Islam, and to finally see the Met's recently opened not-Islamic galleries - wonderful, because of the magnificent collection of masterpieces they house, but also very elegantly conceived and designed so you don't feel overwhelmed by the fact it is actually 1000 objects and 15 galleries. I also had lots of fun catching up with people, including some friends unexpectedly in town.
Then after returning from that trip I had another couple of days to get ready for the Gulf - Doha, Sharjah and Dubai. I was a bit trepidatious about this trip, partly I think because I was tired already from being constantly on the road, but also because I didn't think I would enjoy the Gulf very much, having previously only been to Qatar for a few days back in, amazingly, 2004, when it seemed little more than a building site with no heart and soul. Perhaps because my expectations of this trip were so low, I actually had a really good time.
I was in Doha for 5 days as a visiting scholar at the Museum of Islamic Art - again, the first time I had seen the museum since it opened in 2008 (when I was in Damascus, my other big trip that year) and not only is the building absolutely stunning, it is full of gorgeous things, and much happier curators.
Much more has been built in Doha in the intervening years since I was there so there are other things to go and see - such as Mathaf, the lovely Arab Museum of Modern Art, which had a fantastic Cai Guo-Qiang exhibition on, the Chinese artist who does such amazing work with gunpowder and fireworks. I was also there at the same time they were opening the Gifts of the Sultan exhibition, so I coincided with lots of friends and colleagues, some I hadn't seen for years, others new and happy acquaintances. I even managed to get some good work done - starting to think about the upcoming conference paper on oliphants, on which see below....
View of the skyscrapers of the West Bay, from the Museum of Islamic Art, DohaNext stop was Sharjah for the opening of my own exhibition - the Museum of Islamic Civilisation is the next venue for Owen Jones, and it looks really lovely there, not least because they have so much space!
It was an intense couple of days (not helped by the fact that stupidly I missed my flight from Doha - I won't linger on my own idiocy, but suffice to say it will be a long time before I become blasée again about departure times...). The high point was probably having to give the Sultan of Sharjah a guided tour of the exhibition, and then making the front page of Al-Khaleej the next day!
Then, to 'relax' at the end, I joined my colleagues at Art Dubai, really to see what it was like. Since I didn't have any responsibilities at this point or any meetings to organise, I could just wander round the art fair and the participating galleries in various parts of the city, and really get a feel for what the contemporary Middle Eastern art market is like. Mad, basically. But I loved the 'fringe' art festival in the historic Bastakiyya district - alongside the creek, where old Dubai grew up, is a quarter where houses from the early 20th century have been carefully preserved and during Art Dubai this old quarter gets taken over by artists and installations, with music and performances taking place in some of the larger courtyards. I was there early evening on a Friday, so it was weekend time and full of families relaxing, a really lovely vibe.
This courtyard had a sound installation which consisted of someone reading George Orwell's 1984 with qawwali music playing from some of the speakers. I sat down on one of the beanbags and listened for a good 15 minutes - it made me think the time had definitely come to re-read 1984.
The traditional architecture of the Gulf is actually rather beautiful - courtyard houses built, remarkably, of coral stone (well, it is certainly locally available), with a lot of influences from the other side of the Gulf, such as these lovely wind-towers, which are a traditional feature of many Iranian buildings as well. 
Since getting back (and to some extent, while away) every 'spare' waking hour has been necessarily devoted to the Festschrift volume I am editing - we're at proof checking stage and everything needs to be turned around really fast, and with 30 essays it takes a while. And now I am preparing my next conference paper - I have decided to venture into the thorny territory that is oliphants, though to focus on function rather than style, so it has been quite pleasant to read 'dissertations' on horns of tenure written by late 18th century Antiquarians. And the best thing is that this conference finally gets me to Sicily, which I have been studying long distance since I started my MA in Islamic art... So in a week's time I will be in Palermo, and after the conference K will join me and we will have a week of actual holiday! It will also be good to spend some time together, after I have been away so much recently.
And nice just to have a bit of down time with the long Easter bank holiday weekend. We have just celebrated our first anniversary in our new flat - amazing how that time has flown by! On Easter Sunday last year, we were at Persepolis! It still feels like we have spent more time away from the flat than we have in it - we still haven't properly put up any pictures in our long 'picture gallery'-like hall. We seem to have new problems with the bathroom - a leak into downstairs' bathroom - which slightly makes it feel like this patching up the flat will be never-ending. I suppose that is the difference when you're a home-owner.
But we're feeling more at home too - this weekend, we're cat-sitting for one of our neighbours. I have also been trying to take a bit of time to tend to my window boxes - I have planted some pansies, and finally replanted our money plant (jade). This we inherited from Bev & James when they moved to Aus all those years ago! It has flourished (which I like to think was commensurate with our improved economic circumstances, getting a mortgage an' all that) but it really didn't like the move last year. That, or it couldn't cope with the global financial meltdown. But there seem to be green shoots, just in time for spring.
