Four Major Exhibits of Islamic Art

Wow! Not one, not two, but four major American museums have exhibits of Islamic art!  They include Baltimore’s Walters Museum, New York’s Metropolitan Museum, Dallas’s Museum of Art and Los Angeles County’s Museum of Art.

Each museum focuses on a different aspect of Muslim art. For example, the Baltimore exhibit is called “Pearls on a String: Artists, Patrons, and Poets at the Great Islamic Courts” and “has over ninety objects reflecting Islamic culture from the Bay of Bengal to the Mediterranean.” The exhibit started last February and continues through January, 2016.

The exhibit at the Dallas Museum is called “Spirit and Matter: Masterpieces from the Keir Collection of Islamic Art” and includes “over fifty masterworks in various mediums from rock crystal to works on paper, metalwork, ceramics, carpets, and textiles and explores 13 centuries of Islamic art making across 3 continents, from Spain to Central Asia.” The exhibit began last September (2015) and continues through July 2016.

The Los Angeles exhibit, “Islamic Art Now: Contemporary Art of the Middle East, “features approximately 25 works by artists from Iran and the Arab world.” NPR called the exhibit a “powerful and provocative look at ‘Islamic art now.'” The exhibit began in February of 2105 and continues through January 3, 2016.

Finally, the Metropolitan Museum in New York just completed an exhibit called “Muslim kingdoms of India’s Deccan plateau.” But you can still see the museum’s permanent collection of Islamic art. The galleries were renovated and reopened in 2011. The museum’s blog notes that “the 15 new galleries trace the course of Islamic civilization over a span of 13 centuries, from the Middle East to North Africa, Europe, and Central and South Asia.”

In addition, the British Museum in London has a terrific website all about Muslim art, with art categorized by period from the Umayyads to the crusades to the Ottomans. It also has a great interactive feature where students can learn how curators classify art.

What’s going on? Why the new concentration on Islamic art at the major museums?  NPR asked this question in its story about the Metropolitan’s exhibit.

Sheila Canby, The Met’s curator of Islamic art, told NPR that “showcasing the galleries’ objects provides an alternative to the predominant political narrative.”