Alexander Nagel

My PhD dissertation was on "Colors, Gilding and Painted Motifs in Persepolis: Approaching the Polychromy of Achaemenid Persian Architectural Sculpture, c. 520-330 BCE", completed in the Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, under the supervision of Professor Margaret Cool Root. I have worked on the UNESCO world heritage site of Persepolis in Iran over several seasons beginning in the first decade of the 21st century to examine and understand pigments left in situ, and have also been involved in the publication of materials excavated at Tegea in the Peloponnese, in Stratos in Aitolo-Akarnania, both in Greece. Prior to my PhD, I had finished an MA at Humboldt University, with Professor Stefan Altekamp and Professor Mary Voyatzis, and worked in the Pergamon-Museum in my hometown in Berlin, Germany, where I also assisted for exhibitions highlighting ancient Mediterranean cultures. In Ann Arbor, I was a teaching assistant and worked  in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. In Washington D.C., I have curated exhibitions and installations including "Ancient Iranian Ceramics", "Nomads and Networks: The Ancient Art and Culture of Kazakhstan", "The Nile and Ancient Egypt," (all Smithsonian Institution, as Assistant Curator of Ancient Near Eastern Art in the National Museum of Asian Art), was actively involved in "The Symposium: Food for the Mind, Body, and Soul," "South Arabia Revisited: The Work of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Yemen" (Italian Embassy in Washington, D.C.), "Objects of Wonder" (National Museum of Natural History), and a number of other exhibitions, and I encourage my students to curate their own exhibitions, such as, "Epic. To Be Continued" which introduced the history and legacy of Mesopotamian and Persian material cultures and ideas in Washington, D.C.