All Manner of Experiments surveys art-making in Iraq in the decades following 1932, when independence was achieved and the departure of the British led to the founding of multiple museums and art schools in Baghdad. The exhibition presents the postcolonial vantage point of the Baghdad Group for Modern Art, whose adherents advanced a Middle Eastern modernism with roots in Islamic and Ottoman art and input from Europe and North Africa. While Baghdad’s vitality as a blossoming cultural crossroads has been obscured by multiple wars since the 1980s, All Manner of Experiments resurrects this history and highlights its influence on contemporary Iraqi artists.

This in-depth presentation of the Baghdad Modern Art Group presents a spirited picture of multiple generations of artists working together to forge a new and distinct aesthetic that captured the dynamism and hope of postcolonial life in Iraq. All Manners of Experiments coheres as a complex history of creative cosmopolitism and inclusivity among Iraqi artists, and it offers this legacy for contemporary practitioners to take up and bring into conversation with our time.