QC Talks Hosts Lecture on Women Artists of the Ottoman Empire at Georgetown University in Qatar

Qatar: QC Talks announced that its Fall/Winter season continues with a new session of Lusail Museum Conversations. On Tuesday, October 20, 2026, Dr. Gizem Tongo of Lusail Museum and the University of Oxford will give a lecture titled Painting “Like a Man”: Orientalism and Women Artists in the Late Ottoman Empire at Georgetown University in Qatar.

Event Overview

The talk reflects the shared commitment of Lusail Museum and Georgetown University in Qatar to cross‑cultural public dialogue, in line with the spirit of QC Talks, which brings together artists, thinkers, innovators, policymakers and audiences to examine the ideas shaping the world. QC Talks describes its gatherings as spaces where disciplines meet, perspectives are tested and new connections are made.

Mihri Müşfika and Her Legacy

At the heart of the lecture is Mihri, born in Istanbul in 1885 and trained in Paris at the École des Beaux‑Arts, who became a leading portraitist in the late Ottoman art world. After returning to Istanbul she played a central role in establishing the Academy of Fine Arts for Women in 1914, serving as both instructor and director. In 1911 a Louvre curator praised her as an artist who painted “like a man”, a compliment historically given to women painters whose work was seen as embodying a “masculine” temperament. Mihri, however, viewed her portraiture as an endless apprenticeship, distinct from history painting and Orientalist representation—genres that demanded resources, access and social authority that were often denied to women.

Speaker Profile and Lecture Details

Drawing on archival sources and a rich visual corpus, Dr Tongo will place Mihri’s career alongside those of her women peers within debates on Orientalism, aesthetic hierarchies and artistic agency, showing how women artists navigated, confronted and at times transformed the constraints that shaped their practice. Dr. Gizem Tongo is a Research Associate at the Khalili Research Centre, University of Oxford, where she completed her doctorate. Her research focuses on nineteenth‑ and twentieth‑century art and cultural history, particularly the late Ottoman Empire and the Greater War period (1914–1923). She has co‑curated two exhibitions and taught at Oxford, Middle East Technical University, Hacettepe University and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The lecture will take place on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, from 5.30 pm to 7 pm in the Faculty Conference Room at Georgetown University in Qatar, Education City.