A 15th-century bowl from Iran. (Museum of Islamic Art, Doha)

Qatar's Museum of Islamic Art: Despite flaws, a house of masterpieces

By Souren Melikian

Published: December 5, 2008

E-Mail Article

Printer-Friendly

3-Column Format

Translate

Text Size

DOHA, Qatar: Few can boast of having created from scratch a museum that deals with the arts of the past, no matter from what culture. This feat pulled off within a couple of decades or so by the ruling family of Qatar was revealed this week as the Museum of Islamic Art opened its doors to the public.

Like any Utopian realization, this one displays some remarkable features matched by equally blatant weaknesses. The new building designed by I.M. Pei was meant to be "an architectural gem, home to a thousand treasures," as posters along avenues leading to the museum claim. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder as the saying goes, and not all beholders will be overwhelmed by the geometrical volumes that seemed to be heaped upon one another when seen from a distance.

Once inside, visitors may wonder why little attention has been given to some basic requirements for the display of objets d'art. Daylight, which would have been of immense benefit to ceramics and silver-inlaid brass wares, has been largely shunned in a land where it is often glorious.

Had artificial lighting been devised with greater sensitivity for the objects, this might be forgiven. But apparently someone forgot to warn those who installed the lighting equipment that directional light aimed from high up in the ceiling on sensational candlesticks from Iraq, Iran and Syria would cause nasty reflections, leaving other areas barely discernible.

The contrast with a few objects displayed in individual cases properly lit where their splendor duly comes out, as is the case with a 10th-century bronze animal from Arab Spain, makes these elementary mistakes all the more irksome. In fairness to the new museum, such mishaps are not uncommon in world-famous, long-established institutions. The Louvre exhibition of treasures from Qatar two years ago suffered from similar deficiencies.

These mistakes are compounded by the larger problem of the overall distribution of the art which does not follow any discernible purpose.

Visitors stepping into one of the galleries where the objects are set in individual cases several steps apart may be forgiven if they fail to detect any logic in the arrangement - there is none. A very beautiful bowl with blue lettering on the ivory ground and a label assigning it to 10th-century Iraq sits a short distance away from a 10th-century bronze animal from Arab Spain described as a fountainhead. A 16th-century decanter (not a "water bottle") from the Turkish city of Iznik is there, too, and as they approach a corner of the room, the more diligent art lovers may spot an important astrolabe from Iran signed in 374 of the Islamic calendar (984-985 A.D.) by Hamid ibn al-Khizr al-Khujandi. With luck, they may even catch sight in a wall vitrine of an extraordinary flask of deep blue glass decorated in gold with a stylized pomegranate tree and parrots that is tentatively attributed to Syria.

If confined to one room, the random grouping might conceivably be justified as an anthology of stunning pieces, each to be admired in isolation. But this goes on endlessly.

In the room next to this one, the theme of "patterns" is supposed to justify the selection. Extremely fine revetment tiles from Iznik dating from the 1580s are visible on a wall. Nearby, the opening page of a Moghul manuscript with a magnificent rosette is said to have formed part of an album put together for the emperor of Hindustan, Shah Jahan. The label, alas, omits to specify for the layman's benefit that the page is cropped on all sides, which drastically alters its balance.

Further on, a rare bowl from 15th-century Iran with turquoise cloud bands and lotus blossoms on black ground sits in a case on its own. No aesthetic link connects any of the above.

What could have led to the decision of setting side by side in a central vitrine an ivory oliphant from 12th-century Italy (perhaps Sicily, the label speculates), and a 17th-century tinned copper bowl from Iran with a date possibly to be read 1[0]89 (1678-1679 AD), is puzzling.

If the reason is simply the presence of a hunting scene (naturally involving animals) on the Iranian bowl and of animal effigies carved in sunken relief on the oliphant, the parallel is hardly illuminating. This is the equivalent of displaying together a 12th-century Romanesque sculptural group from France and a 17th-century picture by Rubens on the grounds that both represent Mary and the infant Jesus.

Such lack of visual coherence is the inevitable consequence of the concept of "Islamic art" that underpins the display. This is a European construct of the 19th century that gained wide acceptance following a display of Les Arts Musulmans at the old Trocadero palace in Paris during the 1889 Exposition Universelle. The idea of "Islamic art" has even less substance than the notion of "Christian art" from the British Isles to Germany to Russia during the 1000 years separating the reigns of Charlemagne and Queen Victoria might have.