Lisa Çakmak is currently Chair and Curator of the Arts of the Ancient Mediterranean and Byzantium at the Art Institute of Chicago — a position she started during the Summer of 2020 during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to AIC, Lisa spent ten years working at the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM), most recently as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Associate Curator (2016–present). During her tenure, she oversaw tremendous changes to the museum’s galleries, managing the reinstallation of the Greek and Roman art galleries, as well as SLAM’s collections of Egyptian art and ancient coins. From 2006–2010, Lisa participated in excavations at Tel Kedesh, Israel, and wrote her dissertation on a selection of Hellenistic seal impressions from the site. Recently, she submitted a chapter on the ancient seals found from the Hellenistic city, Maresha. She initiated and realized the critically acclaimed Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost Worlds (2018), SLAM’s largest-grossing special exhibition in 25 years. Lisa has lectured and published widely on an extensive range of scholarly and professional topics, including the roles of women, hybridization, and identity in the Hellenistic world, as well as museum professional training and career paths. She earned her AB from Princeton University, MA and PhD from University of Michigan, and MBA from Washington University in St. Louis.

Geoff Emberling is an associate research scientist at the Kelsey Museum and currently directs archaeological research on ancient Kush at Jebel Barkal in northern Sudan. He received a BA in anthropology from Harvard and a PhD in anthropology and Near Eastern studies from the University of Michigan with a dissertation on ethnicity in early Mesopotamia. He has previously held positions as lecturer at the University of Copenhagen, assistant curator in the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and as museum director and chief curator at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. His research interests include comparative perspectives on ancient cities, states, empires, and ethnicity with a particular focus on ancient cultures across the Middle East and North Africa. He has also written on the politics of archaeological practice and museum display. His archaeological field experience spans much of the Middle East and North Africa. From 1998 to 2004 he directed excavations at Tell Brak, a site in northeastern Syria that contains the remains of one of the earliest and largest Mesopotamian cities. More recently, he directed salvage excavations in the 4th Cataract of the Nile in northern Sudan in 2007 and 2008, and at El-Kurru in northern Sudan from 2013 to 2018. He is increasingly committed to developing fully collaborative archaeological field projects, with equal representation of Sudanese and foreign staff, and extensive engagement with local communities. In addition to archaeological research, he has also curated and directed installation of numerous museum exhibitions, including the reinstallation of the Ancient Middle East gallery at the Detroit Institute of Arts and, most recently, the exhibition Graffiti as Devotion along the Nile at the Kelsey (2019–2020, co-curated with Suzanne Davis).

Photo By: R. Dione Foto (www.rdionefoto.com)

Alexandra Jones, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Archaeology in the Community, is an education leader focused on community outreach and service. Dr. Jones has been an educator for more than 16 years. She obtained dual Bachelors of Arts degrees from Howard University in History and Anthropology in 2001. She obtained a Master’s degree in History from Howard University in 2003 and then attending University of California, Berkeley to obtain a Ph.D. in Historical Archaeology in 2010. Dr. Jones worked for PBS’s television show Time Team America as the Archaeology Field School Director, where she directed field schools for junior high and high school students at each of the sites for the 2013 season. She is currently Professor of Practice of Archaeology at Goucher College.  Dr. Jones serves as the President-Elect for the Society of Black Archaeologists and she serves on the District of Columbia’s Historic Preservation Review Board, the Board of Directors of the St. Croix Archaeological Society and is an Academic Trustee for the Archaeological Institute of America.

Michael Rakowitz is an Iraqi-American conceptual artist who operates within art spaces and beyond them, based in both Chicago and New York City. With his series paraSITE, Rakowitz built customized, inflatable shelters for the homeless using a mere budget of $5.00 for plastic bags and waterproof tape for each project, and the exterior vents of buildings for heat. In Return, produced by Creative Time in 2004, Rakowitz reopened his grandfather’s import and export business, Davison’s & Co., which first operated in Baghdad and then relocated to New York when his family was exiled in 1946. Rakowitz’s resurrected family business offered free shipping to Iraq three months after the U.S. declared stifling trade restrictions on the country. Spoils of 2011, another Rakowitz and Creative Time collaboration, took a more provocative and personal approach to American-Iraqi relations. Housed at Park Avenue Autumn restaurant, the “culinary/art experience” provided patrons with rich traditional Iraqi dishes served on rare pieces of fine China from Saddam Hussein’s personal collection. More surprising than the sensory tensions experienced by each diner, notably the contrast between the “sweetness of the Iraqi date syrup, and the…bitter provenance of the dishware,” was the dramatic conclusion of the project. A cease-and-desist letter from the State Department calling for the “surrender” of the plates abruptly ended Spoils, and resulted in their return to Iraqi territory. It was, according to Rakowitz, a “kind of perfect” ending to the project.