Jun 20, 2023, 6:30 PM – 8 PM

A Greater Beauty: Leeza Ahmady and Paul-Gordon Chandler on Spirituality, Art and the Legacy of Kahlil Gibran

Kahlil Gibran, "The Waterfall," 1919. Watercolor, 12 3/4 x 8 1/2 inches (32.5 x 21.5 cm). Collection of the Gibran Khalil Gibran Museum, Courtesy of the Gibran National Committee. — Kahlil Gibran, *The Waterfal*l, 1919. Watercolor, 12 3/4 x 8 1/2 inches (32.5 x 21.5 cm). Collection of the Gibran Khalil Gibran Museum, Courtesy of the Gibran National Committee.

Join Leeza Ahmady, Director of Programs, Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts and Paul-Gordon Chandler, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Wyoming, Founder of CARAVAN Arts and Author of In Search of a Prophet A Spiritual Journey with Kahlil Gibran as they discuss Kahlil Gibran in the context of art's longstanding engagement with the realms of religious faith and spiritual expression.

Leeza Ahmady

Director of Programs, Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts

Born in Afghanistan, Ahmady is recognized for curating noteworthy exhibitions, festivals, and experimental forums that educate the public about significant and often misconstrued historical, cultural, and spiritually vibrant subject matters evident in the works of artists in the United States and abroad.

Since 2005, she has directed New York’s acclaimed Asia Contemporary Art Week (ACAW)—the premier US platform for leading museums and galleries dedicated to showcasing both reputable and lesser-known artists and dialogues from across all regions of Asia, including the Middle East.

After studying theology, art history, and philosophy at St. John’s University, Ahmady began creating compelling unexpected encounters between art and the public at popular New York City clubs to support artists immersed in site-specific installation, sound, performance, and new media works. Next, her groundbreaking research on post-Soviet Central Asia and the region’s reorientation to pre-Communist nomadic and Islamic identities earned her an MA from Pratt Institute, with presentations at important international venues and exhibitions such as the Istanbul Biennale, Asia Art Archive Hong Kong, and dOCUMENTA (13) Kassel, Germany and Kabul, Afghanistan. (2005-2012)

Ahmady’s highly distinguished collaborative approach to empowering the arts as a vital source for creating consciousness in society has enabled over 3000 diverse practitioners to present their perspectives at notable local and international institutions, art fairs, and auction houses, including: Asia Society, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, Sotheby’s, Alserkal Avenue, Smithsonian Museum, Art Basel, ICI-Independent Curators International, and many more. She has also contributed writings to prominent publications, such as Flash Art, Ocula, Manifesta Journal, among others.
Paul-Gordon Chandler

Paul-Gordon Chandler is the Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Wyoming. He grew up in Senegal, West Africa, and has lived and worked extensively around the world in leadership roles within faith-based publishing, the arts, relief and development and The Episcopal Church. An author, art curator, peacemaker, social entrepreneur and an authority on the Middle East and Africa, his previous roles have included serving as both a non-profit executive and US Episcopal priest.

Paul-Gordon is passionate about using the arts to further our global quest for a more harmonious future, both with each other and with the earth. He has authored four non-fiction books in the fields of spirituality, interreligious peacebuilding and the Middle East.

In 2020, he was awarded by the Archbishop of Canterbury the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation, the highest international award for outstanding service in the work of reconciliation and interfaith dialogue within the Anglican Communion.

https://www.paulgordonchandler...
Kahlil Gibran

Kahlil Gibran was born Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān in Ottoman-ruled Bsharri in 1883 to a Maronite Christian family. In 1895, Gibran’s mother moved him, his half-brother, and two younger sisters to Boston, where she worked as a pack peddler, leaving Gibran’s father in Lebanon. Displaying an aptitude for the arts at an early age, Kahlil Gibran was supported in his endeavors by key mentors throughout his life. As a teenager, Gibran met photographer, publisher, and philanthropist Fred Holland Day and poet Josephine Preston Peabody, both of whom provided Gibran with his entrance into Boston’s creative community. Day hosted the first solo exhibition of Gibran’s drawings in 1904 in his Boston photo studio shortly after Gibran returned from Beirut, where he attended college. At that event, Gibran met Mary Haskell, who would become a lifelong friend (there is speculation that the two were also romantically involved) and benefactor to Gibran, paying for him to attend the Academie Julian art school in Paris from 1908 to 1910. While in Paris, Gibran became involved with Syrian political dissidents, whose activities he continued to support upon his return to the United States. Gibran’s artwork was shown in 1914 at Montross Gallery and in 1917 at the galleries of M. Knoedler & Co, both in New York. In 1923, Gibran published his best-known written work The Prophet, an anthology of poems that captured the attention of the world and eventually made Gibran the best-selling American poet of the twentieth century. On April 10, 1931, at the age of forty-eight, Gibran died of liver disease in his home on West 10th Street in New York City. He was buried in Bsharri on the grounds of what is now the Gibran Museum.
Claire Gilman