- email nari@massart.edu
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education
- Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), History, Theory, and Criticism of Art and Architecture
- B.A., Stanford University, Art History
Nisa Ari is Associate Professor of Arts of the Islamic World. Prior to her appointment at MassArt, she was the inaugural Beinecke Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. (2021-23) and held previous teaching appointments at Montserrat College of Art (2023-25), Georgetown University (2023) and the University of Houston (2019-21).
She specializes in 19th and 20th century visual practices, with a focus on artwork from the Middle East (specifically Palestine and Turkey). Her research explores the relationships between cultural politics and the development of art institutions, especially in the wake of the Ottoman Empire’s dissolution and later colonial and postcolonial developments in the region. Her current book projects explore how international welfare discourse changed artistic practice in early 20th-century Palestine and how the “matter” of land (soil, flowers, trees, and water) has formed the basis for new experiments and resistance in Palestinian art from the twilight of Ottoman rule until today.
Dr. Ari’s research has been published in edited books, the journals Third Text, Arab Studies Journal, and Thresholds, and has been supported by numerous fellowships, including the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), the Mellon Foundation/American Council for Learned Societies, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Palestinian American Research Center, and Darat al Funun. She is the recipient of the 2017 Rhonda A. Saad Prize for Best Paper in Modern and Contemporary Arab Art from the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran and Turkey (AMCA) and has served as a book reviews editor for AMCA since 2018. Dr. Ari previously served as Associate Director of the Studio Program at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York City and curated exhibitions at the Qalandiya International Art Biennial (Jerusalem/Ramallah) and the Keller Gallery at MIT.
She is also guest editor of the recently-published special issue of Hand Papermaking, titled “Palestine on Paper,” (Winter 2025) which includes the ideas and voices of Palestinian artists and scholars such as Jumana Emil Abboud, Wafa Ghnaim, Dor Guez Munayer, and Alessandra Amin, and Michelle Samour, among others.
At MassArt, she teaches courses on Islamic Art and Architecture, Modern Art in the Middle East, the Global History of Photography, and Orientalism, among other specialized course topics.
Education: B.A. Stanford University; Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
