Avinoam Shalem is the Riggio Professor of the arts of Islam at Columbia University, New York. Prior to his appointment, Shalem held the professorship of the history of the arts of Islam at the University of Munich. His main field of interest is in medieval artistic interactions in the Mediterranean basin, medieval aesthetic, and the historiography of the field of art history. He has published over 100 articles in academic magazines and books and is the author of several books. His recent publications include The Image of the Prophet between Ideal and Ideology: A Scholarly Investigation (with Christiane J. Gruber, 2014) and Gazing Otherwise: Modalities of Seeing In and Beyond the Lands of Islam (with Olga Bush, 2015). He co-curated the exhibition The Future of Tradition: The Tradition of Future, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2010) and is currently directing the research project When Nature Becomes Ideology: Palestine after 1947.