Museums abroad: Art of the Arab lands goes on show at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art

The reopening of a suite of 15 dramatic new galleries for the art of the Arab lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and later South Asia at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 1 2011 added a new flavour to the art scene of the US that will ultimately lead to better understanding of Islamic art and culture. The greatly enlarged and completely renovated galleries will house the Metropolitan’s renowned collection of Islamic art — one of the finest and most comprehensive collections of this material in the world. Design features within the new space will highlight both the diversity and the interconnectedness of the numerous cultures represented here.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is a world renowned cultural institution and collection in the United States. The Museum’s two-million-square-foot building houses over two million objects, tens of thousands of which are on view at any given time. The museum recently completed a $50 million renovation of its galleries presenting Islamic art, a project which took eight years and involved countless curatorial and cultural experts, scholars and craftsmen from the regions represented in the collection.

The new 19,000-square-foot galleries that were closed for renovation in May 2003 now house the collection of the Museum’s Department of Islamic Art, more than 12,000 works of art acquired through gifts and purchased over the entire span of the Museum’s 140-year history. The collection comprises more than 12,000 works of art drawn from an area that extends from Spain in the west to India in the east. Some 1,200 works of art in all media are on view at any time, representing all major regions and artistic styles, from the seventh century onward. The first dedicated suite of galleries for this collection was inaugurated in 1975 under the direction of department chairman Richard Ettinghausen.

Highlights of the Museum’s collection include: the sumptuously ornamented Damascus Room, built in 1707, and one of the finest examples of Syrian homes of the wealthy during the Ottoman period; glass, metalwork, and ceramics from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Iran; some of the finest classical carpets in existence from the 16th and 17th centuries, including the recently restored, celebrated Emperor’s Carpet, an exceptional classical Persian carpet of the 16th century that was presented to Hapsburg Emperor Leopold I by Peter the Great of Russia; notable early and medieval Qur’ans; pages from the sumptuous copy of the Shahnama, or Book of Kings, created for Shah Tahmasp (1514–76) of Iran, and outstanding royal miniatures from the courts of the Arab World, Ottoman Turkey, Persia, and Mughal India, including paintings from the imperial “Shah Jahan Album,” compiled for the builder of the Taj Mahal; and architectural elements including a 14th-century mihrab, or prayer niche, from Isfahan decorated with glazed ceramic tiles, which would have served in a Muslim house of worship to indicate the direction to Mecca.