From November 2015 through June 2016, the visual Artist and educator Peter Hristoff—a 2015-16 artist in residence at The Metropolitan Museum of Art—will engage with Museum visitors in a series of creative, multi-faceted public programs that demonstrate the vibrancy, diversity, and beauty of contemporary Islamic culture within the context of the Met’s collection. The residency—one of a few at the Met this year—is a recent example of the continuing evolution of involvement with living artists at the Museum.

In a MetFridays Conversation with an Artist, Hristoff will draw upon his interest in painting, Drawing, printmaking, and traditional Turkish rug making as he involves the public in discussion of a richly patterned 19th-century Turkish prayer rug in the Museum’s galleries (Friday, November 13, at 7:00 p.m.). The Gallery Talk, which is free with Museum admission, will be preceded by a free concert that is part of the Moroccan Court Music Series in the Patti Cadby Birch Court. For details, visit the MetFridays webpage on the Museum’s website. Later this winter, Hristoff will take part in a MetFridays Artists on Artworks gallery talk (Friday, January 29, at 6:30 p.m.), and in the spring, he will join photographer and painter Paul D’Innocenzo for a public conversation about drawing (Thursday, March 3, at 11:00 a.m.).

Hristoff will also lead a suite of drawing programs through which participants will explore the upcoming Exhibition Court and Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuqs (on view April 27-July 24, 2016) and the Met’s permanent collection.

In addition, the artist will work with the Met’s high school interns while they investigate Ottoman rugs, draw inspiration from works of art in the Museum’s collection, and create their own rug designs in dialogue with makers in Turkey who will then weave the designs. The resulting works will be displayed publicly in the Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education in spring 2016 to coincide with the exhibition Court and Cosmos.