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Celebrate the Opening of New Islamic Art Gallery at Detroit Institute of Arts
The Detroit Institute of Arts’ (DIA) long-anticipated new gallery of Islamic art opens to the public on Sunday, Feb. 28. A special pre-grand opening celebration will be held Saturday, Feb. 20 at 6 p.m., featuring an exclusive preview, a sumptuous Silk Road dinner, musical entertainment and a guest speaker. Tickets are $250 and can be obtained by calling 313-833-4025. Proceeds benefit the museum’s Asian & Islamic Art Forum, which supports Asian, Islamic and Ancient Middle Eastern Art public programs and art acquisitions.
The gala’s four-course Silk Road dinner begins in China with a dumpling soup, then passes through Central Asia with a beautiful Uzbeki salad. Next stop on the Silk Road is through Iran and the Arab lands for the main course of rice, khoresh (a Persian stew), and stuffed vegetables, and ends in Italy with a delicious dessert of Tiramisu. The meal will be halal (made in accordance with Islamic law).
As part of the evening’s festivities, Dr. Sheila Canby, Patti Cadby Birch curator in charge of the Department of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, will speak about exhibiting Islamic art in the 21st century. Canby, a renowned scholar, has lectured widely, published extensively and has curated dozens of exhibitions, including Shah Abbas: The Remaking of Iran in 2009.
Internationally acclaimed virtuoso and Grammy nominee Simon Shaheen, and his Ensemble will perform a recital of classical Middle Eastern music. Shaheen is one of the most significant Arab musicians, performers, and composers of his generation. Among other numerous accolades, he was honored in 1994 with the prestigious National Heritage Award at the White House.
Heather Ecker, a specialist in Islamic art and head of the museum’s Department of the Arts of Asia and the Islamic World, is delighted to provide guests with an exclusive preview. “The DIA has some superb works of Islamic art and the gallery is beautifully constructed to showcase these stunning objects,” said Ecker. “Visitors will have an opportunity to discover some outstanding treasures, as well as to view some objects that we could not display previously because of their size, such as large carpets.”
The new gallery includes works of art from the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, Central Asia and India, and spans the 7th–early 20th centuries. Planning the gallery provided the opportunity to study the collection and to carry out conservation treatments and scientific analysis, which resulted in a new understanding of some works of art and the rediscovery of important objects that had remained unrecognized for decades. Among them are a very large, rare, early Ottoman mosque candlestick from around 1500, and a 15th-century Timurid cut-tile panel in the shape of a star.
The museum uses the term Islamic art to refer to works created in areas governed by Muslims and where Islamic culture has had significant influence. As Islamic art comes from a vast area that includes peoples of diverse cultures, languages, and faiths, both Christian and Jewish sacred manuscripts from the Islamic world will also be exhibited alongside exquisite Islamic manuscripts in an area devoted to sacred writings.
In addition to works from the DIA’s collection, the new gallery incorporates significant works of art on loan from nine public and private collections. Most of these are long-term loans to the DIA, but manuscripts from collections including the University of Michigan’s Special Collections Library will be rotated in regularly.
The Islamic galleries are arranged according to the thematic stories the art has to tell. These are expressed in seven major themes: The Silk Road; Masterpieces of Carpet Weaving; Art of the Great Empires: Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal; The Medieval Islamic World: Urban Settings and Goods; Art of the Mamluks; Mediterranean Trade and Spanish Lusterware 1250–1500; and Sacred Writings from the Islamic World.
In keeping with the museum’s visitor-centered approach, multi-layered labels and other interpretive devices will be interspersed in the galleries to help visitors engage with the art. Among these are an interactive “carpet-making” activity, a video of a master calligrapher at work, a large map of the areas represented and the popular Eye Spy labels.
The DIA began collecting Islamic art in the 1890s. Some of the most important masterpieces in the collection were acquired under Wilhelm Valentiner, director from the 1920s to the 1940s. These works include an exceptional Timurid Qur’an, a splendid enameled bottle made in Syria in the Mamluk period, the largest surviving 17th-century Ottoman velvet summer carpet in the world, and an exquisite, all-silk animal carpet probably made for the Safavid ruler, Shah Tahmasp (r. 1524-76).
Recent acquisitions include an impressive early Iznik blue and white charger from Ottoman Turkey, a Qur’an taken by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan from the library of the Uzbek ruler Nadhr Muhammad Khan in 1646, an unusual Mughal painting of mystics seated by a lake, and a small, personal Qur’an, copied by the Ottoman royal calligrapher Mehmed Rasim in 1730, which once belonged to Princess Nazimah Sultan.
The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), one of the premier art museums in the United States, is home to more than 60,000 works that comprise a multicultural survey of human creativity from ancient times through the 21st century. From the first van Gogh painting to enter a U.S. museum (Self Portrait, 1887), to Diego Rivera’s world-renowned Detroit Industry murals (1932–33), the DIA’s collection is known for its quality, range, and depth.
Programs are made possible with support from the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and the City of Detroit.