The annual Templeton Colloquium in Art History at UC Davis this year brings together scholars speaking about the women’s movement and how women were portrayed in the media during 20th-century modernization in Tehran, Cairo, Istanbul and Beirut.

The presenters, coming from around California, Michigan, Indiana and Lebanon, will show the shifting ways women activists and organizers were encouraged to be modern, then criticized and satirized for doing so.

UC Davis art faculty Annabeth Rosen, Shiva Ahmadi, Robin Hill and Gina Werfel all have exhibitions in New York this month.

 When Professor Talinn Grigor was a graduate student, no one would give her “five cents to do research in Iran.” That’s changed.

Shiva Ahmadi left Iran in 1998, but the country and the culture are still present in her artwork. Her paintings are inspired by delicate, jewel-like Persian miniatures depicting religious, mythological or royal court scenes, but Ahmadi’s are filled with things that are not so beautiful.