Exploring the In-Between: Kim Benzel on Her Upcoming TEDxMet Talk
The TEDxMet event on Saturday, September 26, is built around the theme of "The In-Between" and will include talks and performances from a broad range of disciplines. In the first of three posts leading up to the event, Kim Benzel, associate curator in the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art, describes her anticipation and excitement at the opportunity to share her artistic passions with the audience.
«When asked if I would give a talk at this year's TEDxMet conference, The In-Between, I immediately said yes—with great excitement, enthusiasm, and anticipation—and then, almost as immediately, I began to panic. And I mean total panic! I felt I had to come up with something amazing, something profound, something edgy, something cool, something that art history nerds normally don't do. I wasn't even sure that I wanted to talk about my own field of expertise; maybe that was too obvious, too predictable. There was complete chaos in my head for a couple of weeks.»
Once I calmed down and started thinking more clearly and earnestly, I realized that what I most wanted to talk about was, in fact, my own field, department, and collection within the Museum—the world of the ancient Near East. I would accomplish that very simply by telling the story of how and why I fell in love with that world, precisely because it is so abstract and unpredictable and utterly fascinating.
The other obvious reason to do this was that the visual culture of the ancient Near East is serendipitously all about liminality, all about the in-between. That's the story I'd like to share on September 26.
Shaft-hole axe head with bird-headed demon, boar, and dragon, ca. late 3rd–early 2nd millennium B.C. Bactria-Margiana. Silver, gold foil; L. 15 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, and James N. Spear and Schimmel Foundation Inc. Gifts, 1982 (1982.5)
Tickets for the main stage at The Met Breuer and the second venue at the Main Building's Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium are still available. The full TEDxMet program will also be streamed live.
Related Links
82nd & Fifth: "Hyperreality" by Kim Benzel
MetPublications: Selected Publications by Kim Benzel
Kim Benzel
Kim Benzel joined The Met in 1990 and has worked on numerous exhibitions and related publications. Her most recent project is Rayyane Tabet/Alien Property (2019). Kim holds a PhD in Art History and Archaeology from Columbia University and studied at the Kulicke-Stark Academy in New York, where she focused on goldsmithing methods used in antiquity and acquired the technological expertise that now informs so much of her art historical research. Currently, Kim and her colleagues in the Department are working on a full reimagining and renovation of the permanent galleries of ancient Near Eastern art at The Met.