{"id":244808,"date":"2026-05-27T04:02:42","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T04:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/244808\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T04:02:42","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T04:02:42","slug":"on-the-town-at-the-mfa-st-pete-with-ali-banisadr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/244808\/","title":{"rendered":"On The Town at the MFA St. Pete with Ali Banisadr"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 For an artist whose work is being featured at the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg, he explains how a step back in time is influencing his modern work.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd that\u2019s the thing that I\u2019m fascinated by \u2014 like tracing images from popular culture all the way back to ancient times,\u201d said artist Ali Banisadr at the opening of his exhibition \u201cAli Banisadr: The Alchemist\u201d at the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mfastpete.org\/exhibition\/ali-banisadr\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg<\/a>\u00a0through July 12, 2026.<\/p>\n<p>There are two decades of his work there, and there are repeating figures throughout his pieces \u2014 one from an ancient Egyptian tarot card, the symbol of a retired king.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe really makes those paintings come alive. And he delves into the painting, into the literature behind it to the symbolism to the history,\u201d said MFA Sr. Pete Curator Stanton Thomas.<\/p>\n<p>For Thomas, who is hosting Banisadr for an opening preview, he offered a unique opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018It is such a joy to be able to communicate with the artist; normally I work with Old Masters who\u2019ve been dead for centuries,\u201d said Thomas.<\/p>\n<p>For Banisadr, his work is a chance to bring his study of ancient cultural archetypes to life.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s got references for Artificial Intelligence in his work.<\/p>\n<p>Also, look for this artist with a dinosaur head in his different pieces. That\u2019s a self-portrait.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd for me, it was like a symbolic way to talk about me as a painter who is using this old ancient traditional technique to say something about our present time,\u201d said Banisadr.<\/p>\n<p>It may be a modern world, but the ancient images remain the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 For an artist whose work is being featured at the Museum of Fine Arts&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[95594,98,100,99,3640,95595,9,24,12,63,95596,95593,9418,22243,89510,200],"class_list":["post-244808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-app-florida-on-a-tankful","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-florida","tag-florida-on-a-tankful","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-on-the-town","tag-on-the-town-app","tag-orlando","tag-tampa","tag-virginia-johnson","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}