The Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Azerbaijan is preparing the 5th International Symposium on Azerbaijani Carpets
The 5th International Symposium on Azerbaijani Carpets (ISAC) takes place in Baku on October 17-20, 2017.
Since the end of 2014, the Ministry consistently build a strategy for the development of international presence and attracting partners. With the President Ilham Aliyev's decree to hold the Symposium has began the active phase of conference preparation. The decree also indicated the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan and JSC "Azerhalcha" as ISAC’s co-organizers.
In November 2016 Baku visited Alberto Boralevi, the Head of the Academic Committee of ICOC (International Conference on Oriental Carpets), and Ben Evans, editor of London-based publishing house HALI Publishing Ltd. (HLP). Since 1978, the HLP produces academic books on carpets and textiles, as well as specialized journals HALI and COVER. Protocol of Intentions of the upcoming Symposium was signed between the ICOC and the Ministry of Culture represented by the Azerbaijan Carpet Museum, and HLP has become the official media partner of the Symposium. Based on this agreement, HALI publishes articles on Azerbaijan and cover ISAC’s news in HALI magazine and website. HALI also works on a book publication. Ben Evans and HALI staff, who have never been to Azerbaijan before, gladly accepted Minister Garayev’s invitation not only to see Baku but also to travel to Azerbaijan’s regions. Their trip resulted in the decision to dedicate a brand-new 8-day HALI Carpet Tour to study carpet weaving centres in Azerbaijan and driving from Baku to Tbilisi. The first edition of this commercial HALI project will coincide with ISAC.
It is worth noting that the 5th anniversary Symposium will take place after a 10-year break and coincides with anniversaries of the two major Baku museums - the Azerbaijan National Museum of Art (ANMI) and the Museum of Azerbaijan Carpet. This time, ICOC conferences are taken as the basis of ISAC. ICOC has more than 35 years of experience in the study and promotion of Oriental rugs in the West. Since 2014 ICOC delegates are regularly invited by the Ministry to visit Azerbaijan to meet with Azerbaijani carpet experts colleagues, deliver master classes and conduct studies in museum and private collections.
ISAC International Academic Committee consists of members of ICOC and Azerbaijani experts on the carpets, the co-chairs are Alberto Boralevi and Togrul Efendiyev, the representative of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijan National Museum of Arts.
ISAC organizers are planned academic session and a cultural program that includes a number of thematic exhibitions. Work on one of them has begun in 2014. The Azerbaijan National Museum of Art (ANMI) from October 17, 2017 to January 15, 2018 will host unprecedented exhibition titled "Silk treasures: early Azerbaijani embroidery". The exhibition will include never seen before masterpieces of Azerbaijan’s embroidery art from ANMI collection as well as the leading Western museums, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Museum of Textiles in Washington D.C., and important private collections. The curators of the exhibition are Alberto Boralevi and Asli Samadova, ISAC project leader and an ICOC representative from Italy. The Azerbaijan Carpet Museum will host an international group show "Contemporary art and carpets" that encourages foreign and Azerbaijani artists to expand the boundaries of traditional carpet perception.
Online registration and submission of proposals of academic papers on the symposium is open on the event website.