Detroit art museum opening Islamic gallery

26/02/2010

http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=7&id=20019


DETROIT (AP) - In the heart of the largest concentration of Muslims in the
U.S., the Detroit Institute of Arts this weekend is opening a new permanent
gallery of Islamic art showcasing exhibits including a rare 15th-century
Quran of a Mongol conqueror.
"The Arab and Islamic community is significant enough that it needs to see
itself in the museum," said director Graham W.J. Beal. "Their collection had
not been shown very prominently in the previous recent decades."

Sunday's opening comes as several museums worldwide are broadening their
collections. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is working on a suite of
Islamic art galleries and The David Collection in Copenhagen is preparing to
close its gallery for a reinstallation. The Louvre in Paris and the Victoria
and Albert Museum in London also boast of major renovations to their
collections. And Egyptian officials plan to reopen Cairo's Museum of Islamic
Art.

In Detroit, the gallery of about 170 works of art from the Mediterranean
region, the Middle East, Central Asia and India was several years in the
making. It was to be part of the museum's $158 million makeover completed in
2007 but required extra time and money.

The gallery, with its pointed arches, narrow columns and soft lighting, give
the collection a solemn yet inviting feel. Themes spanning 1,500 years
include "Silk Road Inspirations," whose works reveal the reach of the
Islamic world and its role linking East and West; and "Sacred Writings of
the Islamic World," which includes Christian and Jewish manuscripts from the
Islamic world.

Among the gallery's treasures: one of the largest-known Ottoman mosque
candlesticks from about 1500; an elevated giant cut-velvet summer floor
covering made between 1650 and 1700 in Turkey, believed to be the largest of
its kind; and a 15th-century leather-bound Quran, whose gold-flecked paper
was given by the Ming emperor of China to Timur, one of the Mongol
conquerors of the Middle East.

Heather Ecker, the museum's Islamic art curator, described it as the "most
spectacular and important piece in the collection" and said it's one of four
surviving manuscripts and the only one in the U.S. The new gallery also
seeks to "engage the public by telling the stories that the works of art can
tell about themselves," she said.

The gallery's completion follows an ambitious, in-house archaeology project.
A cut-tile mosaic panel hanging above the Quran dating back to 15th century
Iran was found in storage, and the mosque candlestick also was stored,
covered in green wax and misdated to the 18th century. Both have been at the
museum since the 1920s.

Ecker says interest in Islamic art has risen since the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks. Before then, it was largely kept on the sidelines or in a
supporting role to European and American art.

"I think there's a wish to understand and I think much more energy is being
dedicated to understanding what the Islamic world is, its languages, its
cultures and its people," she said.

Beal said a new generation of museum directors are pushing to abandon
geographical or cultural hierarchies and develop collections that "connect
with people." Detroit's effort has come with criticisms. Most disturbing to
Beal was a letter from a member who asked why the museum was "promoting
godless Islam."

"Nobody has said, 'Why are you showing Native American art?' I've never had
that question in my whole career," he said.

Ecker said it's impossible to separate the museum's work from those outside
tensions, but it can help dispel ignorance.

"When a museum has a collection as we do, we do feel a responsibility to
provide not only a beautiful experience ... but also an educational
experience, because I think there's a lot of ignorance," she said. "Not only
among non-Muslims, but a lot of Muslims don't have a good understanding of
the 1,500 years of Islamic history."