Arabesque, an exhibition by Rayyane Tabet at the Storefront for Architecture in New York, imagines a speculative meeting between an American architect and a French historian over a century after theywere both at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Morcos Key designed the graphic identity, promotional material, and newsprint for the project. The exhibition features a sculpture made by stacking twenty original redwood corbels salvaged from Julia Morgan’s Saint John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California, as well as a series of compositions made from the original 1892 print of Précis de l’Art Arabe (“A Summary of Arab Art”) by Jules Bourgoin.
Placing an architect from the Arts and Crafts movement in conversation with a historian who spent his life documenting architectural details in the Middle East and North Africa reveals deep insights into the themes of appropriation and the migration of ideas.
Photography by Zeina Zeitoun
