Emad Abu Ghazi
Emad Abu Ghazi (b. 1955) is a historian and professor emeritus of archival studies at Cairo University. Abu Ghazi comes from a family of artists on both his father’s and mother’s sides. After the uprising against the Mubarak regime in 2011, he briefly served as Egypt’s Minister of Culture, though resigned in November 2011 in protest against the government’s handling of violent clashes on Mohamed Mahmoud Street. He had encountered Hassan Heshmat much earlier already in his childhood. The two families were friends. In our exchange over the years, Abu Ghazi wrote: “[W]e used to visit them at their home, and both my immediate and extended families regularly purchased Hassan Heshmat’s small artworks, which were sold at the Papeterie Khodeir.” Art historian Nadine Nour el-Din highlights an early encounter between the two, which is documented in a photograph: “In one of his earliest group exhibitions, he [Heshmat] showed alongside seminal figures such as Ragheb Ayad, Gamal El-Sagini, Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar and Saad Kamel”. In 2000, Emad Abu Ghazi was responsible for awarding Heshmat the certificate and the prize money of the ‘State Prize of Merit’, Egypt’s highest honour, which he presented to him at his private residence in Ain Shams, since Heshmat was already severely weakened by his illness. Due to bureaucratic decision by the Mubarak government, the accompanying gold medal was not handed out to the laureates for several years. In 2007, Abu Ghazi was the one to finally present the medal to Heshmat’s children after the artist’s death, in his capacity as responsible for the committees of the Supreme Council of Culture. The medal was designed by Gamal as-Sigini.