On 18th September 2012, the new galleries of the Arts of Islam were inaugurated at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. This vast new display is the most recent and largest in a series of gallery and museum developments devoted to the same subject that have opened over the last decade. The event in Paris was preceded by the reopening of the Islamic galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in November 2011, and previous openings have included the David Collection in Copenhagen in May 2009, the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar, in Nov­ember 2008, the Islamic Middle East gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in July 2006, and the Benaki Museum’s new branch museum for Islamic art in Athens in July 2004.

All these institutions have first-class collections. The Louvre can claim to have the longest-established, as it acquired the Islamic objects in the French royal collection when the Museum was founded in 1793, while the most recent is the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) in Doha, where collecting started two centuries later, in the 1990s. The collections of the Benaki and the V. & A. have not grown significantly in recent years, but those of the David Collection and the MIA have increased in size dramatically, and both have acquired many important pieces, including examples from the early medieval period, such as the bird-shaped incense burner now in Copenhagen (Fig.45). Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Museum and the Louvre have made significant purchases in the lead-up to redevelopment. The Louvre’s collection is equal in size to that of the V. & A., which, since the 1850s, has acquired about 14,000 objects from the Islamic period, divided between the Middle Eastern and South Asian collections. But the Louvre’s new galleries also draw on the 3,500 objects in the collection of the nearby Musée d’Arts décoratifs.2 The transfer of these holdings to the Louvre has made its collection by far the richest outside the Islamic world. Three thousand or so of these objects are now shown in newly built galleries on two floors that occupy 2,800 square metres.3

The Metropolitan Museum’s collection is also on a mighty scale, with 12,000 pieces, of which ten per cent is now on show in fifteen new galleries, which cover 1,800 square metres.4 The museum lost its old Islamic galleries when they were closed in 2002 to allow the reconstruction of the Roman galleries below, and a similarly local cause lay behind the other developments. The David Collection had outgrown its premises in C.L. David’s house at 30 Kronprinsessegade, and the renewal of its European and Islamic displays was undertaken once it had acquired no.32 next door. David died in 1960, and at the time his Islamic collection was a relatively small part of the whole, mostly consisting of Islamic ceramics, which he had begun to collect as a sideline. The foundation, however, decided that this was the part of the collection that had the greatest potential, and they set about funding its expansion, so that its Islamic display now shows 1,400 objects and about 350 coins, making it one of the best in Europe.

The David’s gallery space devoted to Islamic art has been doubled in size, to 700 square metres, and this has been done within the limitations imposed by the two tall, multi-storey buildings dating from the beginning of the nineteenth century, which have protected status. The Islamic collection is shown on the top two floors of both houses, so that the main series of galleries goes upstairs and down while providing a survey of Islamic art in a chronological and geographical sequence. The changes in level and the varying shapes and sizes of the relatively small rooms have been handled with ingenuity. The spaces are never oppressive but rather rich and visually instructive, offering information on each region and period through representative and often outstanding objects (Fig.46).5 Further complexity and interest is provided by study collections of calligraphy, manuscript illustration and textiles, which fill three side rooms. Wood-lined display rooms created on the top floor of no.30 in the 1940s are also subject to legal protection and have been turned into a series of ancillary spaces, beginning with one devoted to ethnographic themes, called Islamic ‘cultural history’, in an attempt to connect the collection back to the people who created it.

The contrast between this adaptation of a historic building and the MIA in Doha could not be greater. The MIA’s home was purpose-built for a collection still being formed. The building is as daring as the collecting has been ambitious – it was erected off-shore, on a tongue of reclaimed land, to a striking design by I.M. Pei. For the building’s exterior, Pei took his lead from an Islamic monument, but the links are muted enough to have produced a well-integrated and distinctive design (Fig.47). The central atrium uses the full height of the structure, rising to 45 metres. Here more literal references to Islamic forms are combined with straightforwardly Modernist elements and staircases on an Austro-Hungarian scale. These lead to display galleries on two floors that are notable for their elegance and for the quality of the collection shown there.

Despite its recent formation, the MIA contains many star  objects, among them a richly patterned silk curtain from fifteenth-century Spain that is 3.83 metres long, and a brass incense burner from fourteenth-century Egypt that is remarkable for the degree to which its gold and silver inlay have been preserved. The dominant mode of presentation, too, is that of the star object in isolation, occasionally supplemented by grouped displays devoted to, for example, an impressively large number of medieval glass mosque lamps, all shown suspended as we presume they were meant to be (Fig.48).

The establishment of a museum of Islamic art in Qatar may seem a matter of course, now that the state has the wealth to collect any form of art it wishes. This, after all, is the category into which the last 1,400 years of artistic production in the surrounding region has been placed. Yet the category was created in Europe and for European purposes, and it took shape in the nineteenth century partly through collecting by museums there. These earlier collections reflect an appreciation of the aesthetic qualities of the art of the Islamic world, but this was not always matched by a high regard for the descendants of the men and women who had created it. At first, too, there was no clarity about what this production was to be called, and it was only in the first half of the twentieth century that the term Islamic art gradually acquired canonical status. This approach, rooted in European imperialism, became problematic with the emergence of independent nation states in the Islamic world over the same period, but in the late twentieth century, it gained new legitimacy as part of the intellectual apparatus of self-consciously Islamic states. The MIA in Doha is the outstanding example of this owning of Islamic art: the government there has created an amazing collection, housed it in a magnificent building and presented it to its own people and to the world at large as part of Qatar’s heritage as a Muslim land.
In Europe and North America, too, the concept of Islamic art is not under threat, despite its association with the age of imperialism and the many objections raised to it.6 One common sense objection is that museums do not have galleries of Christian art, so why do they have galleries of Islamic art? One response is that, unlike Christianity, Islam emerged as a polity at the same time that it emerged as a religion, and this polity then became a great empire, just as Islam became a great religion. ‘Islamic’ therefore refers to the civilisation that was formed under this empire and was perpetuated by its successor states. Yet it can be argued, too, that museums do have galleries of Christian art, or the art of Christendom, but that these terms have undergone a Chomskyan transformation and re-emerged as European art, following the formula Christendom plus the French Revolution equals Europe. What we need, then, is a secular, geographical substitute of the same kind for Islamic art. This, though, is difficult.

The history of the V. & A. means that, as noted above, its Islamic collections are divided geographically.7 In terms of display, the principal gallery is devoted to the Islamic Middle East, while a smaller but equally distinguished group of objects appears within the South Asia gallery. ‘South Asia’ is an unproblematic term, but ‘Middle East’ is a product of external domination. When the British became the prevailing power in Egypt and south-west Asia in the nineteenth century, they travelled there by ship, either through the Mediterranean to what they called the ‘Near East’ or via the Indian Ocean to the ‘Middle East’, the region between the Near East and India, Britain’s East par excellence. After the Second World War, the Americans replaced the British as the leading Western power in the region, but, as they travelled there by air rather than by ship, the division into Near and Middle East became redundant. So the two terms were elided into one, and the region became the Middle East.

Yet this ‘Middle East’, for all its Eurocentric oddness, is the only concise modern geographical term for the region that is in general use, even in the region itself (al-Sharq al-Awsat in Arabic, Khavar-e Miyaneh in Persian, Orta Do˘gu in Turkish etc.). Other terms with less imperialist loading can be suggested, such as West Asia and North Africa, and it could be argued that museums should take the lead and adopt one of these, but to invent a new term and impose it from outside the region would be to repeat the sins of the past.

On the face of it, a radical change that matches all these desiderata has taken place at the Metropolitan Museum. Where there were once Islamic galleries, there are now displays devoted to ‘the art of the Arab lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia’. Although the Museum does not acknowledge it, this can probably be accounted for by a revolt among those who have paid for the new galleries. The category Islamic art finds favour in some parts of the Islamic world, as we have seen, and it can make sense, too, for secular Arabs, since Arabs invented it, and its geographical spread coincides with the area where Arabic was the language of intellectual life. It does not, though, receive the same welcome from Turks and Iranians with a secular and patriotic outlook. For them, Turkish and Iranian art form self-sufficient categories that can be studied and appreciated within their own terms. Why should their art, then, be subsumed under the heading of Islamic art, with its religious connotations?

The Metropolitan Museum’s revolution does not go very far, however. In the small Introductory Gallery, the wall panel informs us that the manuscripts and objects in the room are examples of Islamic art. The interpretation of the diverse objects and manuscripts in this gallery seems shaky, as though the concept promoted there has not been fully reconciled with the galleries’ overall branding. The worst example is a label that tells us that ‘Early Korans are difficult to read’. For whom? Not for Koran readers of the period, who probably knew the text off by heart in any case.

All but one of the remaining rooms are divided up in the manner of a historical museum, following the same broad chronological and geographical lines as the David Collection and most other displays, and in a way, too, that follows the schemes often found in general books on Islamic art. The Maghrib – the relatively remote, western end of the Islamic world – is treated separately in these schemes, as it developed a distinctive artistic tradition of its own from the tenth century onwards. The Metropolitan’s holdings in this field are not strong, but they have been reinforced in several ways – by giving the Maghrib collection a room immediately off the Introductory Gallery, which means that it does not end up as a forgotten byway;8 by borrowing outstanding objects from the Hispanic Society of America; and by adding a Moroccan Court (Fig.49). This space was created in situ by Moroccan craftsmen working with tile, stucco and wood to produce an example of contemporary interior decoration in an apparently conservative traditional style. It provides a visual context for the objects in the adjoining gallery but is separated from them so that it is clearly not a museum object itself.

In London, Maghribi interiors of just this kind were first created as didactic tools as long ago as 1854, when the Crystal Palace was re-erected on Sydenham Hill.9 By the time the Palace burned down in 1936, they were out of date and were never repeated. The Moroccan Court, then, belongs to a world of architectural casts and electrotypes. The remaining galleries are, though, more redolent of the twentieth century. Their design was carried out in-house, and, with their neutral colours and unemotional architecture, they resemble the other galleries in the Metropolitan Museum, which have advanced only moderately from the watered-down version of the Beaux-Arts style often chosen for American museums. In this case, the overall monotony of the design is brought out by a single, bizarre exception, in the gallery for the Art of the Ottoman Court. There a single free-standing étagère houses a selection of Iznik ceramics, resembling nothing so much as a showcase in a nineteenth-century glass or crockery shop (Fig.50).

Being old-fashioned is not in itself a crime, but in museums elsewhere changes have been made for good reasons. In many places, for instance, the height at which objects are displayed has been lowered so that they can be seen without extra effort by people in wheelchairs. Here, though, wheelchair-users have to hoist themselves up from the arms to get a view into the cases. By contrast, the MMA provides stools for visitors in front of paintings from Islamic manuscripts shown at table level. This praiseworthy tradition is repeated in the new galleries, encouraging visitors to scrutinise examples from a great collection.

The Iznik case is the closest these galleries come to a coup-de-théâtre. Everywhere else there is an even pace. Whereas in Doha, the Museum’s design heralds the presence of great art, the Metro­politan’s display shies away from any ‘performance’ of this type. The largest works, a huge Mamluk carpet laid out below a huge Mudéjar ceiling, are sited as far as possible from the entrance, and, oddly enough, in a gallery headlined as being for Ottoman art, while what is perhaps the most precious element in the early part of the collection is screened off in its own mini-gallery.

This is the group of objects received by the Museum as the result of its excavations of medieval sites around Nishapur (Neyshabur) in eastern Iran in the 1930s and 1940s. It includes a series of wall panels from one building, partly original and partly casts of the sections now in Tehran, as well as numerous everyday and luxury items, which together give us a precious cross-section of what one group of medieval Iranians had in their houses. Amid all the items bought off the market over the last century or so by the Museum and its donors, this display validates and enriches the Metropolitan Museum galleries in a way that is unusual among the presentations of Islamic art discussed here. The Nishapur display is attractive and well interpreted, with a good deal of contextual information provided in digital form. The MMA’s collection is rich, too, in un-archaeological material such as carpets, and this broad range of holdings shines forth, coaxing us to visit it in vast numbers – more than a million have come since November 2011.

The most-visited museum in the world is, though, the Musée du Louvre, where the new Islamic galleries have already received more than a million visitors in just six months. Unlike the MMA, the Louvre is a national museum that functions as part of the state, and it is characteristic that its new Islamic galleries were created under presidential patronage. In 2003, President Jacques Chirac determined that the Museum would have a new Department of the Arts of Islam, and soon after, the new galleries were commissioned. The structure created to accommodate them is the grandest project undertaken by the Museum since the huge Grand Louvre works were completed in 1993: it fills the Cour Visconti, a large nineteenth-century courtyard on the Seine-side of the palace, and its vast display spaces on two storeys are the size of what elsewhere would be a respectable museum, but encased in and communicating with other galleries.

The upper floor, at the level of the courtyard, is a single rectangular space covered by a wavy roof of golden metal mesh. This is penetrated by light and diffuses it, while the glass walls admit more, reflected off the stone façades of the courtyard outside. This luminosity limits the displays at this level to less light-sensitive materials and to themes that can be illustrated using them. Yet the showing of Islamic art in daylight lends the gallery an audacious air, even though no errant ray of summer sun will be allowed to strike an object in these tightly controlled surroundings. Novel, too, is the diagonal positioning of the cases and the use of large, gently flashing animated maps. The overall effect is elegant.

The material shown at this level includes displays on the early Islamic period. There are star pieces, shown in cases that house one, two or three of these great works of art. These are usually objects preserved above ground, some in Paris itself, as in the case of the early eleventh-century rock crystal ewer from Cairo, transferred from the basilica of Saint-Denis at the time of the Revolution, and a bronze peacock-shaped aquamanile produced in 972, probably in Córdoba, and acquired from the royal household at the same time. There is, too, a high proportion of archaeologically recovered items, among them finds from Susa (Shush) in south-west Iran, excavated by the French from the 1880s onwards. These are not star objects, but, as with the Nishapur material in the MMA, they have an important place in the story being told, which is, though, far from complete. The label beneath a display of tablewares, for example, admits how little we know about contemporary eating habits and about how these objects were used. This honesty is relaxing – readers know they are not being denied information and are put on the same level as the specialist.

Downstairs, and under ground, are even larger spaces with every surface in the same dark colour. Here artificial light reigns supreme. The larger gallery at this level lies directly beneath the Cour Visconti, and it is divided from a smaller space by the foundations of the galleries above. These are so thick that embedded within them is the vaulted entrance chamber of a palace in Cairo erected in the second half of the fifteenth century, an ashlar structure built of yellow and white limestone, with elaborate carved decoration (Fig.51). This is one of the great finds of the project for, although it was shipped to France in 1889, the stones were never unpacked and were dispersed to various locations until the rediscovery of eleven drawings of the chamber in the 1990s.10

The scale of the setting of Islamic art is also suggested by very long lines of architectural elements that frame the main room, one of them a wall of distinctively Ottoman tile panels, which recalls the combination of recycled tile panels found in the harem in Topkapı Palace in Istanbul. These are matched by an immensely long raked display on which carpets can be rotated, although their quality does not in fact justify the prominence this gives them. Otherwise, textiles are surprisingly notable for their absence. Between these framing devices, and in the smaller display space beyond the thick wall, are rows and rows of cases. Looking down on them, though, it is remarkable how little wayfinding has been provided to aid the visitor, and how little variation in spacing there is to indicate, say, the move from one period to another. It is the pieces themselves that tell you what period you are examining rather than extraneous information such as signage or variations in background colour. The result is that the visitor plunges into an ocean of objects. You descend, knowing that floating in it are the so-called Baptistère de St Louis and a host of other outstanding objects (Fig.52).

In truth, the scale of the Louvre galleries is so large, so like a museum in themselves, that they cannot be visited all in one go. Just like a museum of any size, they must be visited and revisited to take in all they have to offer. If nothing else, through their size, through the number of objects on display, and through these objects’ variety, the new galleries tell us that the Islamic world is large, complex and important. They are formidable in both the French and English senses. This, perhaps, reflects a political purpose. Commanded into being by the President of the Republic, their scale and glamour assert France’s long relationship with the Islamic world in general and the Arab world in particular. The announcement of the galleries brought promises of funding from Arab kings and princes, among others, and so the project began its work.

These four new displays of Islamic art show that this concept has staying power, even if it puzzles many museum visitors who take its name to refer solely to religion. Allocating the medieval and early modern artistic production of a large part of the world to this category matches the expertise of a growing cadre of curators, and it is attractive to sufficient numbers of funders. Moreover, it is part of the system by which the collections of universal museums are divided up into large bodies of material that can be allocated galleries. Subdivided, it could not compete with other art-blocks such as China and Africa; its parts would lose rank and be marginalised.

1    These projects had all been scheduled by May 2004, when a one-day conference to discuss them was held at the Louvre.
2    On this collection, see R. Labrusse, ed.: exh. cat. Pur décor? Arts de l’Islam, regards du XIXe siècle, Paris (Les Arts décoratifs and Musée du Louvre) 2007; reviewed in this Magazine, 150 (2008), pp.393–96.
3    S. Makariou, ed.: Islamic Art at the Musée du Louvre, Paris 2012.
4    M.D. Ekhtiyar, P.P. Soucek, S.R. Canby and N.N. Haydar, eds.: Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New Haven and London 2011.
5    The labels throughout are in Danish, but hand-held devices provide information in English.
6    See M. Carey and M. Graves, eds.: ‘Islamic Art Historiography’, special number of the Journal of Art Historiography 6 (June 2012), which republishes a number of recent articles on this subject, in addition to the new contributions; see arthistoriography.wordpress.com/number-6-june-2012-2/ (consulted March 2013).
7    The South Asian collection has had a separate existence within the V. & A. since the 1870s; see R. Skelton: ‘The Indian Collections: 1798 to 1978’, The Burlington Magazine 120 (1978), pp.296–305; special issue devoted to the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Middle Eastern collections were brought together in 2002, from the material produced west of Pakistan.
8    M. Rosser-Owen: ‘Mediterraneanism: how to incorporate Islamic art into an emerging field’, in Carey and Graves, op. cit. (note 6).
9    I. Leith: Delamotte’s Crystal Palace: a Victorian pleasure dome revealed, Swindon 2005.
10    A.-C. Daskalakis-Mathews: Le porche mamlouk, Paris 2012.