Martin Nixon

Bio

Martin has a PhD in Art History from York University, UK, and a master’s from the Open University, UK. His research interests include Early Modern architecture, southern Italian art and architecture, the reception of ornament, and questions of global art history and transnational interactions in visual culture. Originally from London, Martin left the UK not long after university and has spent most of the last thirty years or more living and working in a range of countries. He lived in southern Italy for four years and his MA and PhD dissertations were on architecture from that part of Italy. He lived in East Asia for ten years, and has also lived in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. His undergraduate degree was in Fine Art (Painting), and he retains an interest in the techniques of painting and printmaking. In addition to his art history research he enjoys travel and learning languages, and feels fortunate to have been able to visit many historical and cultural sites around the world. He has been in Dubai since 2018, and this has inspired new research into the historic architecture of the Arabian Gulf.

Martin’s range of interests is reflected in the courses he teaches at CACE. He teaches an introductory course on world art history, a course on modernist art and architecture, and courses on historic and contemporary Islamic art and architecture. He has also taught research methods for artists and designers, and he recently developed a new special topics course on arts of East Asia which stems from his time spent in that region. In his teaching he aims for an approach that allows for variety, student interaction, and for students to bring their own ideas and interests to course projects.

Martin’s research on the architecture of southern Italy formed the basis for his master’s dissertation on the eighteenth-century Sansevero Chapel in Naples, an enigmatic building whose patron and the sculptures he commissioned have fed interesting speculation and legends, and a PhD dissertation on the rebuilding of the towns of the Val di Noto area in Sicily in the eighteenth century after a catastrophic earthquake. The research on the Sansevero Chapel, and an introductory chapter on southern Italian chapels, was published in Zirpolo, L (ed), The Chapels of Italy from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Centuries: Art, Religion, Patronage and Identity in 2010. In 2023, Martin published a book on aristocratic patronage and the rebuilding of the Val di Noto entitled Architecture, Opportunity, and Conflict in South-Eastern Sicily. Rebuilding after Natural Disaster with Amsterdam University Press. He has also published short articles on contemporary artists for the Dubai Collection website, and is working on new research on the architecture of historic houses of the Gulf and their connections with the Indian Ocean trade routes. Since 2022 he has been working with a small group of international scholars to help support the Mohamed Tahar Manuscript Library in Timbuktu, Mali, a library of manuscripts in Arabic and other languages. Martin is a member of the Association of Art Historians (UK), European Architectural History Network, H-Net Art History, Italian Art Society, and the Historians of Islamic Art Association.

Office

Dubai Academic City, Dubai

Phone:

+971 4 402 1686

Email:

Teaching Areas

AAH322 History of Islamic Art and Architecture, AAH 324 Contemporary Islamic Art and Architecture, AAH355 History of Design, AAH426 History of Interior Design, ART220 Introduction to Art History, ART221 Research Methods in Art and Design,

Research and Professional Activities

Books and Book Chapters:

“The Philosophies in Stone: Reading the Sansevero Chapel in Naples” in Zirpolo (ed.) The Chapels of Italy from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Centuries: Art, Patronage and Identity (New Jersey, 2010).

“Early Modern Chapel Decoration in Southern Italy: The Historical Background” in Zirpolo (ed.) The Chapels of Italy from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Centuries: Art, Patronage and Identity (New Jersey, 2010).

Conference Papers:

“The Bait Al Naboodah, Sharjah. A Nineteenth-Century Merchant’s House between Tradition and Globalisation” at Interiors Reconfigured. Changing Materiality in the Decorative Arts of the Middle East and North Africa, 18th-20th Centuries, Vitrocentre, Romont, Switzerland. 3-4 November 2023.

“The Palazzo Biscari Museum in Catania, Sicily: Archaeology, Academies, and the work of Aristocracy” at Artistic and Architectural Heritage of the Nobility between Old and New Regimes, Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Art, June 2022.

 “The Palazzo Biscari Ballroom in Catania. Lightness, Refinement and Aristocratic Distinction” at Experiencing the Court, Open University UK, April 2019.

“Order and Ordering in the Hexagonal Towns of Avola and Grammichele” at From Building to Continent: How Architecture Makes Territories, University of Kent, June 2018.