Department of Art History

Source: https://arthistory.uchicago.edu/faculty/curators/neumann Parent: https://arthistory.uchicago.edu/graduate/courses

Kiersten Neumann

Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures

Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum

Kiersten Neumann

Curator, ISAC Museum, and Research Associate, ISAC

Lecturer

Near Eastern Art and Archaeology

Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, Rm 219

neumann@uchicago.edu

Biography

Kiersten Neumann specializes in the art and archaeology of West Asia, with a focus on Assyrian and Achaemenid material culture. She is co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East (2022) and has published numerous articles on sensory experience, ritualized practice, and visual culture of the first millennium BCE, as well as museum practice, collecting histories, and provenance research. Her current research projects include a study of the connections between Assyria and Arabia and the aromatics industry; a decolonizing investigation of the ISAC’s Persepolis expedition archives; and a volume on the sensory experience of the Neo-Assyrian temple.

At the ISAC Museum, Kiersten has curated such exhibitions as “Persepolis: Images of an Empire” (2015), “Joseph Lindon Smith: The Persepolis Paintings” (2022), “Making Sense of Marbles: Roman Sculpture at the OI” (2022–2023), and “Artifacts Also Die” (2023), in addition to the museum’s permanent galleries as part of a complete renovation (2019). She has held teaching appointments for courses on the art and archaeology of West Asia, North Africa, and the Mediterranean; conducted archaeological fieldwork in Turkey, at the site of Tell Tayinat, and Greece, at the Athenian Agora; helped host the ISAC’s Ancient Land of Persia travel program in Iran (2016); and serves as a consultant on international museum and art projects and exhibitions.

Neumann received her BA in Classical Studies and German and her MA in Ancient Culture, Religion, and Ethnicity in the Mediterranean from the University of British Columbia; and her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Art and Archaeology from the University of California, Berkeley, for which she received a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and was awarded The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TAARII) Donny George Youkhana Dissertation Prize for the best U.S. doctoral dissertation on ancient Iraq.

Connections

Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures\ Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum

Publications

“From Khorsabad to Chicago: (Re)Telling the Story of the Assyrian Reliefs at the Oriental Institute,” in Dieux, rois et capitales dans le Proche-Orient ancien. Compte rendu de la LXVe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (Paris, 8–12 juillet 2019), edited by M. Béranger, F. Nebiolo & N. Ziegler.Publications de l’Institut du Proche-Orient ancien du Collège de France 5, 505–540 (Leuven/Paris/Bristol: Peeters, 2023)

“To Touch Upon: A Tactile Exploration of the Apadana Reliefs at Persepolis,” in The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East, edited by Kiersten Neumann and Allison Thomason, 77–99 (Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2022)

"Urbanisation Beyond the City Walls: Ritualised Practice and Sensory Experience at Sennacherib’s Khinis Canal Head,” in Religion and Urbanity, eds. J. Rüpke and S. Rau, 2021 (Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter)

The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East, edited by Kiersten Neumann and Allison Thomason (Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2022)

“Sensing the Sacred in the Neo-Assyrian Temple: The Presentation of Offerings to the Gods,” in Distant Impressions: The Senses in the Ancient Near East, eds. A. Hawthorn and A-C. R. Loisel (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2019)

“Laying the Foundations for Eternity: Timing Temple Construction in Assyria,” in Sounding Sensory Profiles in Antiquity: On the Role of the Senses in the World of Ancient Israel and the Ancient Near East, International Conference, Vienna, March 23–35, 2017, eds. T. Krüger and A. Schellenberg, Ancient Near East Monographs (ANEM), 253–278 (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2019)

“Reading the Temple of Nabu as a Coded Sensory Experience,” Iraq 80: 181–2011 (2018). DOI: 10.1017/irq.2018.11

“Gods Among Men: Fashioning the Divine Image in Assyria,” in What Shall I Say of Clothes? Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Dress in Antiquity, eds. M. Cifarelli and L. Gawlinksi, Selected Papers in Ancient Art and Architecture 3, 3-23 (Boston: Archaeological Institute of America, 2017)

“In the eyes of the other: The mythological wall reliefs in the Southwest Palace at Nineveh,” Archaeological Review from Cambridge 30.1: Seen and Unseen Spaces, eds. M. Dalton, G. Peters, and A. Tavares (April 2015)

Exhibitions

Artifacts Also Die, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum, 2023

Making Sense of Marbles: Roman Sculpture at the OI, Oriental Institute Museum, 2022–2023

Joseph Lindon Smith: The Persepolis Paintings, Oriental Institute Museum, 2022

Persepolis: Images of an Empire, Oriental Institute Museum, 2015–2017

Unintentional Artifacts: Material Remains of People and Practice at Tell en-Nasbeh, Badè Museum of Biblical Archaeology, Pacific School of Religion, 2014–2015

The Part Which the Camera Plays, Badè Museum of Biblical Archaeology, Pacific School of Religion, 2013–2014

Shedding Light on the Layers of a Lamp: Creation, Production, and Symbolism at Tell en-Nasbeh, Badè Museum of Biblical Archaeology, Pacific School of Religion, 2011–2012

William Frederic Badè: Theologian, Naturalist, and Archaeologist, Badè Museum of Biblical Archaeology, Pacific School of Religion, 2009–2011