CARAVAN Board Member Jessica Wright shares her top pick.
Michelangelo, The Pietà, 1498-99, Marble 174 cm × 195 cm
Michelangelo was only 25 years old when he carved this. I recall myself as a teenager reading a fictionalized account of his life by Irving Stone, and being transfixed by the story of this sculpture created by someone so young. I spent hours studying pictures of it from every angle, amazed by the delicacy of the marble in the rendering of the garments, and the genius of capturing living and dead flesh in stone.
Jessica Wright is a specialist in contemporary Middle Eastern art, gallerist, curator and Arabist. She obtain her B.A. in Art History and Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. She was previously the gallery director and cultural coordinator for the Jerusalem Fund Gallery in Washington, DC, which focuses on exhibiting contemporary art from the Middle East, along with offering a full range of cultural programming in the form of book signings, film festivals, dance and music recitals, and other cultural events. She most recently served as the Managing Editor at the Center for Public Justice, a non-profit organization based in Washington, DC.
Jessica curated CARAVAN’s contemporary Coptic icon exhibition in Cairo titled “The Eternal Eye” in 2012. She has lived in Jordan and Egypt for over twenty years, and is currently based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with her husband and two children. She works as a freelance editor and consultant.