Within the next ten years some of the world's most spectacular collections of Islamic art will go on display in newly designed surroundings.
This year has already seen the Benaki Museum in Athens open a separate Museum of Islamic art, while the Louvre in Paris, the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Detroit Institute of Arts are all currently renovating their Islamic galleries.
Touring exhibitions and loans from some of these collections have added to an almost unprecedented number of exhibitions of Islamic art in Europe and the US in the past year. This activity is occurring while conflict continues across the Muslim world. The display of Islamic art is often referred to as a bridge to cultural understanding, but while its current high profile can only be a positive thing, it is debatable whether it really has the potential to heal wounds. The rhetoric that has accompanied exhibition openings and museum development plans can often seem glib.
In the past decade, the international profile of Islamic art has been substantially raised by super-rich Muslim collectors actively buying on the commercial market, often with the intention of putting their collections on public display. The governments of Muslim countries have usually been only too happy to encourage the opening of museums to house such collections, or even offer generous arrangements to incorporate them into state institutions.
That was the case with the collection of more than 20,000 objects assembled by Sheikh Nasser al-Sabah, which is on permanent loan to the Kuwait National Museum. The Sultan of Brunei has filled museums in his tiny country with objects acquired in the 1990s, as well as making substantial loans to the Islamic Arts Museum in Kuala Lumpur. This opened in 1998, ostensibly to house the collection of Malaysian philanthropist and museum founder Syed Mokhtar Albukhary.
The pre-eminence of calligraphy in the Muslim conception of Islamic art has led to a fundamental difference between Muslim collections and those formed in the west. Collections of Qurans and calligraphy have been an almost exclusively Muslim preserve and one of the largest was that made by Bahraini businessman Abdulateef Jassim Kanoo. This formed the basis of the Beit al-Quran museum of Islamic manuscripts in Manama, Bahrain in 1990.
Most recently, the Islamic art market has been transformed by the presence of Sheikh Saud al-Thani, a nephew of the Emir of Qatar, who has paid sky-high prices to secure spectacular objects for a museum of Islamic art that is currently under construction in Doha. The new museum is being built to plans by Chinese American architect I M Pei and is one of five new museums intended to transform Qatar into the cultural epicentre of the Gulf.
One of the most important private collections of Islamic art has yet to find a home, in spite of the ambitions of its owner, the Iranian Jewish businessman Nasser David Khalili. Numbering more than 20,000 objects, it is matched only by the al-Sabah collection.
But even though there has been a long-standing quest for public display, Khalili has yet to find a location for the London museum that he has pledged to build within the next five years. The stated aim of the museum is to use art and culture 'to create good will between the West and the Muslim world.' Meanwhile, he continues to lend works for exhibitions and his systematic publication of the collection has now reached 16 volumes.
In spite of the wealthy collectors and the museums that have sprung up in their wake, Islamic art is still perceived as a marginal and esoteric field in the west. It remains to be seen how much this will change with the recent plethora of exhibitions and the new presentation of important museum collections.
European interest in Islamic art is by no means a recent phenomenon. The earliest private collections composed of Arabic, Persian and Turkish art were made around the beginning of the 19th century, and later museum collections were built up from objects brought back as European colonial expansion eroded the old Islamic empires.
As Islamic art developed into an identifiable field of scholarship, collecting by museums and private individuals gained greater focus in Europe and the US, leading to the evolution of an increasingly sophisticated taste and scholarship. The advent of Middle Eastern oil money and the outbreak of military conflicts across the Islamic world in the 1970s coincided with a flourishing of interest in Islamic art in the west.
Many of the museum galleries now being redeveloped were installed at that time, while the shifting of the Islamic art market from New York to London paved the way for the activities of many wealthy Muslim collectors.
The collections of the V&A, the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Benaki Museum were all started at a similar time in the late 19th century and grew substantially in the first 50 years of their existence.
To varying degrees they all reflect the interest in applied arts that was current at that time. As a result they are particularly strong in areas such as ceramics, metalwork and textiles, all of which have come to be regarded as characteristic components of western collections of Islamic art.
The V&A's collection, which is the oldest of those under renovation, began with numerous Middle Eastern artefacts from the Great Exhibition of 1851. It then grew between 1862 and 1900 as the British government made purchases from exhibitions in London and Paris as well as on the commercial market. The acquisitions were inspired by the influence of the ornamental decoration and textile patterns in the work of designers such as Owen Jones and William Morris.
Important early acquisitions for the V&A included the Egyptian collection of Dr Meymar, with the 20-foot high, 15th-century minbar of Sultan Qa'itbay, always a prominent feature in the Islamic galleries. Reinforced by the Salting Bequest in 1908, and the transfer of Middle Eastern artefacts from the India Museum in the following year, the collection today numbers more than 10,000 objects.
The dreary and uninspiring Islamic galleries in the V&A have needed an overhaul for some time, with treasures such as the huge 16th-century Ardabil carpet from Iran barely visible in the murky light. Though its renovation had been part of the future plan of the museum, it was turned into a reality by the donation of £5.4m by Hartwell, part of the Saudi-based Abdul Jameel Latif Group, for the new Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art, which is set to open in 2006.
While work is under way, an exhibition of more than 100 works from the collection entitled Palace to Mosque: Islamic art from the V&A is on show at the National Gallery of Art, Washington and will travel to Texas, Tokyo and Sheffield. Tim Stanley, the museum's curator of Islamic art, says that the exhibition has provided an important opportunity to see the objects from a new perspective.
But rather than introduce any radical scholarly revisions, he says the new gallery will play to the strengths of the collection, which includes the largest groups of Islamic ceramics and textiles in the world.
With its broad definition and wide-ranging geographical diaspora, there is no single obvious scheme for the display of large collections of Islamic art. According to Stanley, the new gallery will highlight the separation between religious and courtly art inherent in many periods of Islamic culture, beyond which the display will be thematic.
The Islamic collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art was started soon after the museum was founded in 1870 and its first significant acquisition was the 1891 bequest of Edward Moore, a silversmith who amassed a superb collection of Islamic metalwork. It grew substantially in the 20th century and now contains 12,000 objects, with its greatest strengths in ceramics, carpets and paintings.
The new galleries, replacing those installed in 1975 when Islamic art was first shown on its own, will re-open in 2008. Many important decisions concerning display have yet to be made. Daniel Walker, the head curator, says the idea will be 'to project the complexity and diversity of Islamic art without confusing or overwhelming our audience'.
As the Met renovates its Islamic galleries, a selection of 30 works from the collection has been sent on a year-long loan to the Louvre. The Paris museum is also building a new gallery for its own collection of Islamic art, which comprises more than 10,000 objects.
Only a tiny number of these have ever been on display. By 2009, 4,000 Islamic objects will be shown under a glass ceiling in the Visconti courtyard in the Denon wing. These will include pieces of Mamluk metalwork such as the Baptistery of St Louis and the Barberini vase, the Iznik peacock dish and the Spanish Umayyad pyxide of al-Mughira. The gallery will also feature works from the collection of the Museé des Arts Decoratifs, not shown in public since 1972.
In France, with its large immigrant population of North African Muslims, the decision to create a new Islamic department and gallery at the Louvre has created a good deal of political rhetoric.
Jean-Jacques Aillagon, the culture minister, said: 'Many immigrant youths do not fully adhere to our culture, nor do they know their own culture of origin. It's good to show that our republic respects, displays and studies this culture.' It remains to be seen how many Muslim youths from the Paris housing estates will be found perusing the Mamluk metalwork and Fatimid ceramics.
A dimension of cultural diplomacy has also been inherent in the creation of the new Islamic annexe of the Benaki Museum in Athens, which is the only museum of Islamic art in Greece. As past tensions with neighbouring Turkey fade and increasing importance is accorded to relations with the other Muslim countries of the Mediterranean, awareness of Islamic culture is now very much encouraged.
The extensive collection of more than 10,000 objects was formed in Egypt in the late 19th and early 20th century by Antonis Benakis, a cotton trader who moved to Athens in 1926. About 1,500 objects are shown in a chronological display in the new galleries, which occupy adjoining neo-classical houses in the city centre.
A number of important pieces have counterpoints in other major collections, such as a door from Samarra, paired with one in the Louvre and a fascinatingly cross-cultural Fatimid dish with a depiction of the deposition from the Cross, a shard of which is also in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo.
According to Mina Moraitou, the curator of the Islamic collection at the Benaki Museum, the conception for a separate Museum of Islamic art was first proposed in 1988 but was then delayed when work on the listed buildings revealed archaeological remains.
Since opening to coincide with the Olympic Games it has been a great success, a portent surely for the other museums undergoing development. It can only be hoped that by the time the new galleries are ready, the cultural chasm between the Muslim world and the west will not have grown wider.
Lucian Harris is a writer at The Art Newspaper
This year has already seen the Benaki Museum in Athens open a separate Museum of Islamic art, while the Louvre in Paris, the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Detroit Institute of Arts are all currently renovating their Islamic galleries.
Touring exhibitions and loans from some of these collections have added to an almost unprecedented number of exhibitions of Islamic art in Europe and the US in the past year. This activity is occurring while conflict continues across the Muslim world. The display of Islamic art is often referred to as a bridge to cultural understanding, but while its current high profile can only be a positive thing, it is debatable whether it really has the potential to heal wounds. The rhetoric that has accompanied exhibition openings and museum development plans can often seem glib.
In the past decade, the international profile of Islamic art has been substantially raised by super-rich Muslim collectors actively buying on the commercial market, often with the intention of putting their collections on public display. The governments of Muslim countries have usually been only too happy to encourage the opening of museums to house such collections, or even offer generous arrangements to incorporate them into state institutions.
That was the case with the collection of more than 20,000 objects assembled by Sheikh Nasser al-Sabah, which is on permanent loan to the Kuwait National Museum. The Sultan of Brunei has filled museums in his tiny country with objects acquired in the 1990s, as well as making substantial loans to the Islamic Arts Museum in Kuala Lumpur. This opened in 1998, ostensibly to house the collection of Malaysian philanthropist and museum founder Syed Mokhtar Albukhary.
The pre-eminence of calligraphy in the Muslim conception of Islamic art has led to a fundamental difference between Muslim collections and those formed in the west. Collections of Qurans and calligraphy have been an almost exclusively Muslim preserve and one of the largest was that made by Bahraini businessman Abdulateef Jassim Kanoo. This formed the basis of the Beit al-Quran museum of Islamic manuscripts in Manama, Bahrain in 1990.
Most recently, the Islamic art market has been transformed by the presence of Sheikh Saud al-Thani, a nephew of the Emir of Qatar, who has paid sky-high prices to secure spectacular objects for a museum of Islamic art that is currently under construction in Doha. The new museum is being built to plans by Chinese American architect I M Pei and is one of five new museums intended to transform Qatar into the cultural epicentre of the Gulf.
One of the most important private collections of Islamic art has yet to find a home, in spite of the ambitions of its owner, the Iranian Jewish businessman Nasser David Khalili. Numbering more than 20,000 objects, it is matched only by the al-Sabah collection.
But even though there has been a long-standing quest for public display, Khalili has yet to find a location for the London museum that he has pledged to build within the next five years. The stated aim of the museum is to use art and culture 'to create good will between the West and the Muslim world.' Meanwhile, he continues to lend works for exhibitions and his systematic publication of the collection has now reached 16 volumes.
In spite of the wealthy collectors and the museums that have sprung up in their wake, Islamic art is still perceived as a marginal and esoteric field in the west. It remains to be seen how much this will change with the recent plethora of exhibitions and the new presentation of important museum collections.
European interest in Islamic art is by no means a recent phenomenon. The earliest private collections composed of Arabic, Persian and Turkish art were made around the beginning of the 19th century, and later museum collections were built up from objects brought back as European colonial expansion eroded the old Islamic empires.
As Islamic art developed into an identifiable field of scholarship, collecting by museums and private individuals gained greater focus in Europe and the US, leading to the evolution of an increasingly sophisticated taste and scholarship. The advent of Middle Eastern oil money and the outbreak of military conflicts across the Islamic world in the 1970s coincided with a flourishing of interest in Islamic art in the west.
Many of the museum galleries now being redeveloped were installed at that time, while the shifting of the Islamic art market from New York to London paved the way for the activities of many wealthy Muslim collectors.
The collections of the V&A, the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Benaki Museum were all started at a similar time in the late 19th century and grew substantially in the first 50 years of their existence.
To varying degrees they all reflect the interest in applied arts that was current at that time. As a result they are particularly strong in areas such as ceramics, metalwork and textiles, all of which have come to be regarded as characteristic components of western collections of Islamic art.
The V&A's collection, which is the oldest of those under renovation, began with numerous Middle Eastern artefacts from the Great Exhibition of 1851. It then grew between 1862 and 1900 as the British government made purchases from exhibitions in London and Paris as well as on the commercial market. The acquisitions were inspired by the influence of the ornamental decoration and textile patterns in the work of designers such as Owen Jones and William Morris.
Important early acquisitions for the V&A included the Egyptian collection of Dr Meymar, with the 20-foot high, 15th-century minbar of Sultan Qa'itbay, always a prominent feature in the Islamic galleries. Reinforced by the Salting Bequest in 1908, and the transfer of Middle Eastern artefacts from the India Museum in the following year, the collection today numbers more than 10,000 objects.
The dreary and uninspiring Islamic galleries in the V&A have needed an overhaul for some time, with treasures such as the huge 16th-century Ardabil carpet from Iran barely visible in the murky light. Though its renovation had been part of the future plan of the museum, it was turned into a reality by the donation of £5.4m by Hartwell, part of the Saudi-based Abdul Jameel Latif Group, for the new Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art, which is set to open in 2006.
While work is under way, an exhibition of more than 100 works from the collection entitled Palace to Mosque: Islamic art from the V&A is on show at the National Gallery of Art, Washington and will travel to Texas, Tokyo and Sheffield. Tim Stanley, the museum's curator of Islamic art, says that the exhibition has provided an important opportunity to see the objects from a new perspective.
But rather than introduce any radical scholarly revisions, he says the new gallery will play to the strengths of the collection, which includes the largest groups of Islamic ceramics and textiles in the world.
With its broad definition and wide-ranging geographical diaspora, there is no single obvious scheme for the display of large collections of Islamic art. According to Stanley, the new gallery will highlight the separation between religious and courtly art inherent in many periods of Islamic culture, beyond which the display will be thematic.
The Islamic collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art was started soon after the museum was founded in 1870 and its first significant acquisition was the 1891 bequest of Edward Moore, a silversmith who amassed a superb collection of Islamic metalwork. It grew substantially in the 20th century and now contains 12,000 objects, with its greatest strengths in ceramics, carpets and paintings.
The new galleries, replacing those installed in 1975 when Islamic art was first shown on its own, will re-open in 2008. Many important decisions concerning display have yet to be made. Daniel Walker, the head curator, says the idea will be 'to project the complexity and diversity of Islamic art without confusing or overwhelming our audience'.
As the Met renovates its Islamic galleries, a selection of 30 works from the collection has been sent on a year-long loan to the Louvre. The Paris museum is also building a new gallery for its own collection of Islamic art, which comprises more than 10,000 objects.
Only a tiny number of these have ever been on display. By 2009, 4,000 Islamic objects will be shown under a glass ceiling in the Visconti courtyard in the Denon wing. These will include pieces of Mamluk metalwork such as the Baptistery of St Louis and the Barberini vase, the Iznik peacock dish and the Spanish Umayyad pyxide of al-Mughira. The gallery will also feature works from the collection of the Museé des Arts Decoratifs, not shown in public since 1972.
In France, with its large immigrant population of North African Muslims, the decision to create a new Islamic department and gallery at the Louvre has created a good deal of political rhetoric.
Jean-Jacques Aillagon, the culture minister, said: 'Many immigrant youths do not fully adhere to our culture, nor do they know their own culture of origin. It's good to show that our republic respects, displays and studies this culture.' It remains to be seen how many Muslim youths from the Paris housing estates will be found perusing the Mamluk metalwork and Fatimid ceramics.
A dimension of cultural diplomacy has also been inherent in the creation of the new Islamic annexe of the Benaki Museum in Athens, which is the only museum of Islamic art in Greece. As past tensions with neighbouring Turkey fade and increasing importance is accorded to relations with the other Muslim countries of the Mediterranean, awareness of Islamic culture is now very much encouraged.
The extensive collection of more than 10,000 objects was formed in Egypt in the late 19th and early 20th century by Antonis Benakis, a cotton trader who moved to Athens in 1926. About 1,500 objects are shown in a chronological display in the new galleries, which occupy adjoining neo-classical houses in the city centre.
A number of important pieces have counterpoints in other major collections, such as a door from Samarra, paired with one in the Louvre and a fascinatingly cross-cultural Fatimid dish with a depiction of the deposition from the Cross, a shard of which is also in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo.
According to Mina Moraitou, the curator of the Islamic collection at the Benaki Museum, the conception for a separate Museum of Islamic art was first proposed in 1988 but was then delayed when work on the listed buildings revealed archaeological remains.
Since opening to coincide with the Olympic Games it has been a great success, a portent surely for the other museums undergoing development. It can only be hoped that by the time the new galleries are ready, the cultural chasm between the Muslim world and the west will not have grown wider.
Lucian Harris is a writer at The Art Newspaper
