Troubling the Waters

When Art Young published his political cartoon titled Poisoned at the Source (above) in the July 1913 issue of The Masses, The Associated Press sued him for libel. Born January 14, 1866, Art Young fought against the establishment at every turn, taking on the compliant media that Young saw assisting capitalism in its oppression of the people. Young married his passion for justice with his passion for art at a young age. After looking at a book illustrated by Gustave Dore, Young decided to become an illustrator himself, eventually studying at the Art Students League of New York, where he may have encountered several of the members of what later became known as the Ashcan School. Whereas the Ashcan School artists sought to depict the new urban existence of big American cities such as New York at the beginning of the twentieth century, and some of those artists, such as John Sloan and George Bellows dabbled in what could be called Socialism, none of them took their art as far left politically as Young. Sloan, the art director of The Masses, left over the ideological breach. "To me this magazine exists for socialism,” Young then said of The Masses. “That's why I give my drawings to it, anybody who doesn't believe in a socialist policy, as far as I go, can get out." Young believed in The Masses as an antidote to the “poison” spread by the AP and other mainstream media outlets.

Young truly saw the battle for social justice as a religious crusade. “I think we have the true religion,” Young told an interviewer in 1940 in his defense of his Socialism. “If only the crusade would take on more converts. But faith, like the faith they talk about in the churches, is ours and the goal is not unlike theirs, in that we want the same objectives but want it here on earth and not in the sky when we die.” In A Compulsory Religion (above, from 1912), Young portrays capitalism as the great god mammon, before whom the masses must bow out of fear of poverty and sickness. It’s amazing that we face the same concerns today, nearly a century later, as health care and bankruptcy haunt Americans as the twin specters of economic recession. Young uses amazingly deep blacks to depict the dark mood and ever-present fears of the people, whom he dwarfs before the gluttonous, grotesque god of greed. Although surrounded by the Impressionist-influenced Ashcan School artists, Young instead approaches the techniques of the German Expressionists in visually plumbing the depths of the collective American psyche.

I find Young’s illustrations still fresh and relevant today. Although he points to specific concerns of his time, those concerns still remain with us as long as social and economic injustice reigns. The timelessness of Young’s crusade coincides with the eternal message of Christianity in Young’s He Stirreth Up the People (above, from 1914). For Young, Jesus is “The Workingman of Nazareth” speaking to other workers to stand up for their rights. Here is Jesus the community organizer and rabble rouser causing trouble who refuses to be silenced. The U.S. Government tried to silence Young and The Masses in 1918 under the Espionage Act, claiming that Young’s anti-war comics interfered with the draft for World War I. The charges were eventually dropped, but The Masses ceased publication soon after. Young, however, continued to stir up trouble in other publications, practicing his personal brand of Christianity that placed the Beatitudes over the Ten Commandments. “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled,” said Jesus. Art Young lived those words and drew them until the end.

Revenge of the Nerd

You may have noticed a new box on the right-hand column featuring The Nerd Test, a cute little quiz to help you measure your nerdiness or lack thereof. (And, no, that’s not a picture of me above on the left. But it’s close.) Around the same time I found the test, Annie sent me a link to a story musing over whether Barack Obama is our Nerd-in-Chief. Annie and I proudly wear the mantle of nerds and will happily raise Alex to be a nerd as well. (Of course, Annie and Alex hide their nerdy exterior beneath a beautiful and stylish exterior, whereas I actually look more nerdish than I am, if that’s possible.)

Take the quiz and see how you do. However, keep in mind that the quiz tests more for the computer/mathematics strain of nerdishness than the arts and culture variety. That being said, I still scored a 62, making me nerdier than roughly two thirds of all the people who’ve taken the test, most of whom have built a computer with their bare hands. Just call me a nerd for all seasons.

I thus offer the following “Are You an Art Blog By Bob Type of Nerd?” Quiz:

1. Do you have your own art blog?

2. Have you ever gone to a wedding and gushed over a painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence as much as you did over the bride?

3. At the same wedding, did you reel off the names of the four top English portraitists of the reign of George III as if they had gone to YOUR wedding?

4. Have you ever had other museum visitors ask YOU questions rather than the people working there because they’ve overheard you talking to your spouse and friends?

5. Do you covet art books like a crack addict looking for a fresh pipe?

6. Do you save art calendars for years after they’ve expired just to look at the pictures?

7. Do you look at a painting and think of three other paintings similar to it but done by other people?

8. Did your spouse enlist her friends to find a Hawaii state quarter to put in your Christmas stocking and thus complete your collection, which you see as tiny sculptures?

9. Have you ever eaten at Hank’s Place in Chadds Ford, PA, hoping that Andrew Wyeth and Helga will stroll in for pancakes?

10. Have you ever compared a work of art to an episode of Seinfeld, a Shakespearean sonnet, or a Woody Allen movie and then blogged about it?

If you answered yes to most of these, you qualify as a full nerd. Go out and get a pocket protector! (If you answered yes to all of these, we may have been separated at birth. E-mail me.) Either way, embrace your inner nerd and celebrate (don’t curb) your enthusiasms, whether they be Starry Night or Star Trek, Pollock or politics, da Vinci or da Bears. The nerds shall inherit the earth, or at least have fun trying.

[Please feel free to include your own most nerdish art moments or experiences in the comments. It’s OK, you’re among friends.]

UPDATE: I took the 2.0 version of the quiz that has some literature and other arts-related questions and achieved “Cool Nerd King” status. Now that's an oxymoron if there ever was one.

Karma Chameleon

Zelig will always rank up there among my favorite Woody Allen films. Allen’s depiction of a human chameleon mingling with the famous faces of the 1920s beautifully captures the spirit of the time while humorously analyzing the human need for acceptance—the drive to blend in and belong. Like Zelig, John Singer Sargent often adapted the characteristics of artists around him and incorporated their style into his portraits of them. Born January 12, 1856, Sargent lived a nation-less life with his travel-mad parents until moving to Paris in 1874 to study with Carolus-Duran. Carolus-Duran taught Sargent to paint portraits in the style of Diego Velázquez. Upon finishing his studies with Carolus-Duran, Sargent painted his Portrait of Carolus-Duran (above, from 1879), which perfectly illustrates the teacher’s Velazquez-inspired technique. Carolus-Duran not only taught Sargent his style of painting but also how to be a painter. Sargent’s teacher counted Fantin-Latour, Courbet, Manet, and Monet among his many friends, setting an example for Sargent, who would develop a large, international circle of artist comrades that nourished his art. The good karma such associations brought helped make Sargent a diverse, well-rounded visionary who could seemingly paint in any style with true depth and insight.

Sargent first met Claude Monet in 1876, when Sargent was an unknown but promising student. By 1885, Sargent’s rising prominence in the art world helped him get closer to Monet. Although Sargent made his fortune and fame through realistic, if slightly romanticized portraiture, he admired the Impressionists and painted Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood (above, from 1885) in an Impressionist style. The freedom and color of Monet’s Impressionism must have seemed like a great release for Sargent after all the dark backgrounds and fine clothing of his lucrative portrait practice. Monet didn’t care much for Sargent’s portraits in terms of subject matter, although he recognized the genius of Sargent’s technique, but Sargent saw the greatness of Monet and paid great tribute to him by emulating Monet’s style. Lesser, less confident artists might have resented the one-sidedness of their relationship, but Sargent kept true to his pattern and took the best elements of Impressionism and made them his own.

Sargent’s Impressionist journey reminds me of Mozart’s late symphonies written during his travels and named after their place of origin: No. 31 "Paris," No. 32 "Overture in the Italian style," No. 35 "Haffner," No. 36 "Linz," and No. 38 "Prague." At each destination, Mozart took the local folk tunes and styles and did them better than the locals. One of Sargent’s final artistic “destinations” came in the person of Antonio Mancini, whom Sargent humbly called the greatest painter alive. Sargent painted his Portrait of Antonio Mancini (above, from 1898) while trying to find portrait commissions for Mancini in England. Sargent took the gifted, yet mentally ill artist under his wing and, simultaneously, studied Mancini’s thick impasto style closely, employing it marvelously in the portrait of Mancini. Mancini later scratched into his portrait the words, “Mancini thanks/ devotedly Mr. Sargent/ whom is so good/ to this bad painter Mancini/ London.” In that act of profound kindness, Sargent garnered a score of good karma that perhaps contributed to his own charmed life. Sargent returned to his customary lyrical portrait style, but he allowed himself the occasional side trips into Impressionism and impasto, always keeping the people in his life in his heart through his art.

The Man in the Arena

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

From The Man in the Arena speech by Theodore Roosevelt, delivered April 23, 1910

At the edge of the shadowy beginnings of the Italian Renaissance stands a giant—Giotto, who died on January 8, 1337. Born around 1267, Giotto’s name now rings with the almost inhuman divinity of Praxiteles or Zeuxis, thanks mainly to the early mythmaking of Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists. Vasari tells of Cimabue discovering Giotto as a young shepherd drawing his sheep on a rock. Later, taking a page from the legend of Zeuxis, Giotto (according to Vasari) painted a fly so realistic that Cimabue tried to shoo it away. Behind the myth of Giotto, however, remains the reality of his groundbreaking realism, which departs sharply from the Byzantine style of Cimabue and two centuries of art before Giotto’s heyday. Although many works once ascribed to Giotto are now disputed, the frescoes of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, also known as the Arena Chapel (shown above from the entrance, from 1303-1306) bear Giotto’s signature, a clear sign of pride in his mammoth accomplishment. Like Roosevelt’s “man in the arena,” Giotto knew victory and defeat, yet continually burned with the passion to strive valiantly through error into what Vasari and others judged as perfection.


There are so many great frescoes in the Arena Chapel that it’s hard to pick a few to talk about. (A nice selection of images of the frescoes can be found here.) One of the most moving for me, as a Christian, is Giotto’s depiction of the Resurrection, also known as Noli me tangere (above, from 1304-1306). It’s amazing to think of such colors surviving seven centuries. Even though Giotto paints the supreme supernatural event of Christianity, he infuses it with his signature realism and humanity. Mary Magdalene gives in to her instinctive impulse to touch the risen Christ, disbelieving her eyes, but Jesus pulls away and tells her, “Do not touch me.” Whereas Mary Magdalene and the sleeping soldiers wear earthy reds and browns, Christ and the angels wear white with golden accents and almost fade away into nothing as Christ freshly assumes his heavenly aspect and begins to leave the physical world behind. The stylized Christ of the Byzantine period now becomes a Christ who walks among real people, thus reaffirming the promise of the Incarnation lost in the Dark Ages and pointing forward to the humanism of the Renaissance.


Before Michelangelo painted his Last Judgment, he studied Giotto’s, placed at the end of the Arena Chapel (above, from 1306). (Better pictures of details of Giotto’s Last Judgment appear here.) We know Michelangelo visited the Arena Chapel and looked closely at the frescoes because some of his studies of those works still exist. Giotto’s vision of the final days must have captured Michelangelo’s imagination and planted a seed that took root decades later when the opportunity arose to cap off his monumental achievement in a different chapel that would become synonymous with his name. A contemporary of Dante, Giotto most likely knew of Dante’s Divina Commedia and its mind-blowing conception of Hell. Giotto creates a visual equivalent to Dante’s Inferno in the lower right corner of his Last Judgment that borders on Hieronymus Bosch in perversity, yet predates Bosch by almost a century and a half. The more you look at Giotto’s work the more he seems like a time traveler, skipping ahead to see what’s ahead and then darting back to his own time to paint it. As much as Vasari overindulged in the farfetched in his Lives, Giotto more often than not manages to live up to the myth.

Sophisticated Lady

With all eyes set to turn to Washington, DC, and the inauguration of Barack Obama in a few weeks, Americans become hyperaware momentarily of the pomp and circumstances surrounding the presidency, including the perceptions of the First Lady. Since 1961, the standard by which all other First Ladies have been measured has been Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. “Jackie” shaped the style of the Kennedy presidency and contributed greatly to the myth of “Camelot” surrounding those short three years. Margaret Leslie Davis’ Mona Lisa in Camelot: How Jacqueline Kennedy and Da Vinci’s Masterpiece Charmed and Captivated a Nation looks back at the highest moment of Jackie’s ambitions to infuse art into politics and push American culture into competing with the traditions of Europe and assume a place as the leader of the world in that sphere as well. An obsessive Francophile, Jackie kept her eye on the greatest art “prize” of Western civilization—Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. While on a diplomatic visit to Paris, Jackie and JFK met up with Andre Malraux, the French Minister of Culture. Jackie had read many of Malraux’s works and was “powerfully drawn to his ideas about culture, humanity, and social justice,” writes Davis, forming what a friend called an “intellectual crush.” Charmed by the beautiful First Lady, Malraux (shown above with Jackie) may not have seen the request for the Mona Lisa coming, but he eventually succumbed to her charms and the chance of improving the strained post-war relations between France and the United States. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship that would bring the most famous “lady” in art to American shores for the first, and only, time.

“I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris,” JFK joked upon returning, acknowledging his secondary status. Step two of Jackie’s charm offensive came when Malraux visited the United States in May 1962. Jackie arranged a lavish dinner in Malraux’s honor. Mark Rothko, Andrew Wyeth, and Franz Kline were invited to represent America’s great painters. Representatives from American literature, film, and music were also called upon to impress Malraux. The star of the show, however, remained Jackie. In the photo above from the event, all eyes focus on the First Lady, radiant in a shimmering pink dress. The Malraux dinner culminated the Kennedys’ program for raising the status of the arts in America. “To their way of thinking,” Davis writes, “the centuries-old tradition of public support of the arts embraced in Europe was one of the missing ingredients in American life.” The added prestige such cultural weight gave to JFK’s presidency was an intended bonus, of course. At the end of the evening, his head still spinning, Malraux whispered a promise in Jackie’s ear that the Mona Lisa would be coming to America.

To circumvent Louvre officials, French President Charles de Gaulle and Malraux deemed the loan of the Mona Lisa a “personal” loan to the Kennedys. Although Jackie wooed de Gaulle, too, the hard-nosed leader saw more Cold War politics than culture in the loan. “President de Gaulle desired a gesture of solidarity to the Americans that didn’t require alterations to his independent nuclear weapon program,” Davis explains, “and the Mona Lisa, the ultimate icon of French cultural superiority, could serve as the roving ambassador of French good will.” Davis masterfully interweaves the story of the Mona Lisa’s travels with the very real dangers of the Cold War at its hottest. Knowing that discussions for the trip took place as Kennedy met the challenge of the Cuban Missile Crisis, an October when the end of the world seemed a distinct possibility, places the cultural event in a whole new perspective. Despite the Louvre’s fears that the Mona Lisa would not survive the voyage, the Mona Lisa did indeed come to the United States in December 1962. National Gallery of Art Director John Walker (shown above with Jean Chatelain, Director of the Museums of France, in front of the painting at the National Gallery, January 1963) hesitatingly accepted the duty of watching over the Mona Lisa in America. Walker, who had studied with Bernard Berenson, had helped school Jackie and JFK personally in art appreciation. Fears of being the man responsible for the destruction of the Mona Lisa led to multiple health problems for Walker, but he did not let the Kennedys down. Davis breathlessly tells the tale of how even the slightest change in temperature or humidity threatened to shatter the already cracked wood support of the Mona Lisa. You’ll find yourself on the edge of your seat, even though you know the ending.

On January 8, 1963, a gala opening at the National Gallery hosted by the President and First Lady welcomed the Mona Lisa to America. (Above, President Kennedy, Madame Malraux, Andre Malraux, Mrs. Kennedy, and a noticeably uncomfortable Vice President Lyndon Johnson surround the Mona Lisa.) In his speech at the unveiling, JFK, Davis writes, “shrewdly transformed the Mona Lisa into a symbol of the Cold War, representing Western progress in contrast to the repressive regime of the communist block.” “Politics and art, the life of action and the life of thought, the world of events and the world of imagination are one,” JFK said in closing. As Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., put it, “[JFK] saw the arts not as a distraction in the life of a nation but as something close to the heart of a nation’s purpose.” Whereas Napoleon once looted Europe and beyond and brought back those treasures to the Louvre to proclaim France as the military and cultural center of the world, JFK and Jackie “borrowed” the Mona Lisa to proclaim America and the twentieth century military and cultural center of the globe. In the 1950s, the U.S. Government tried to assert American freedom and cultural superiority through the promotion of Abstract Expressionism. In the 1960s, the Kennedys, rather than forge an American culture from scratch, simply claimed the heights of Western civilization as America’s rightful possession.

After a month at the National Gallery, the Mona Lisa traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. (Above, a photo of the line of people waiting outside the Met to see the Mona Lisa.) Between the two venues, nearly 2 million visitors saw the great painting. Stunned by the level of interest, Walker instructed National Gallery guards to direct visitors through the rest of the museum to “let them see a little Rembrandt, too.” Before the Mona Lisa exhibition, Walker was “long a believer in the exclusivity of institutions of fine art,” according to Davis, but the public fervor converted Walker into a populist. In his speech at the Mona Lisa’s departure, Walker said, “This famous portrait stirred some impulse toward beauty in thousands of human beings who had never felt that impulse before.” Post-Mona, the National Gallery and the Met experienced continued increased attendance. Davis rightfully points to the Mona Lisa exhibition as the beginning of the blockbuster exhibition in America, and more significantly points to the indispensible role of Jacqueline Kennedy in helping create the phenomenon of the American museum as we know it today.

At the groundbreaking of the Robert Frost Library in late October 1963, JFK said the following:

I look forward to an America which will reward achievements in the arts as we reward achievements in business or statecraft. I look forward to the America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well.

One month later, JFK was dead. His and Jackie’s legacy in the arts, however, lived on. “Mona Lisa’s visit triggered a lingering national love affair with the arts in which culture was no longer the privileged domain of a few educated connoisseurs,” Davis writes, “but rather central in the life of all Americans.” Many of the children who came to see the Mona Lisa (above, at the National Gallery) became adults with a continued interest in the arts. Alas, 45 years later, claims of the centrality of art in American life ring hollow. Museums now face a challenging economy as well as decades of underfunded arts education in schools and NEA scapegoating. However, if the results of the last election prove anything, it might be that Americans have grown weary with the Culture Wars of the last four decades. Perhaps the new administration will revitalize the arts and culture as part of the larger program of restoring American pride and prominence internationally. If so, then Margaret Leslie Davis’ Mona Lisa in Camelot could serve as a much-needed reminder of what once was and what could be again if someone with the vision of Jacqueline Kennedy not only dreams big, but makes it happen.

[Many thanks to Da Capo Press for providing me with a review copy of Margaret Leslie Davis’ Mona Lisa in Camelot: How Jacqueline Kennedy and Da Vinci’s Masterpiece Charmed and Captivated a Nation.]

Moving Heaven and Earth

When Robert Smithson tragically died in a 1973 plane crash, he literally left his legacy written upon the earth in works such as Spiral Jetty (above, from 1970). Born January 2, 1938, Smithson began as a painter, working in the Abstract Expressionist style before emulating the religious art of the Byzantines and, finally, turning to minimalist sculpture after marrying the sculptress Nancy Holt. Although minimalist in conception, Smithson’s works are often mammoth in construction. The 1,500-foot long Spiral Jetty composed of 6,550 tons of rock and earth (hauled to the lake by two dump trucks, a large tractor, and a front end loader) took only 6 days to build. On the seventh day, Smithson rested, but the Spiral Jetty has been working and evolving in its environment ever since. In 1970, the waters of the lake shone with an eerie red that caught Smithson’s eye and created a great contrast with the black basalt of the jetty itself. Over time, thanks to the salt content of the water and other environmental factors, the rocks have turned almost white and the water a pale pink. Rising waters submerged Spiral Jetty for almost 30 years. Today, oil companies looking for new deposits threaten the land nearby. Fortunately, fans of Smithson’s work and ecologically mindful parties have preserved his work and protected the land he loved.

There’s a great debate over whether Spiral Jetty should be restored. Smithson believed in the wisdom of nature’s cycles and saw beauty in entropy, so perhaps he would have approved of Spiral Jetty’s present appearance. Whether he would approve of the present state of Partially Buried Woodshed (above, pictured in the early 1970s) is another matter. In January 1970, Smithson erected a standard wooden shed on the grounds of Kent State University and buried it under twenty truckloads of earth. The shed collapsed beneath the weight of the dirt. In May of that same year, the infamous Kent State Shootings occurred in which United States National Guardsmen shot and killed four students and wounded nine others who were protesting the the American invasion of Cambodia. Soon after the shootings, someone scrawled “May 4 Kent 70” on Partially Buried Woodshed (visible in the picture above), linking the damaged structure to the damaged American social structure of the time. In 1975, arsonists burned part of the shed. In following years, Kent State officials removed parts of the shed as they fell away. Today, only the shed’s foundation and a mound of earth mark where Smithson’s work once stood. Where Partially Buried Woodshed once symbolized the shattered American edifice, it’s removal now symbolizes how America chose to forget the past rather than remember, leaving nothing to take its place.

Smithson is a difficult artist to appreciate in the sense that his work is so site-specific. Pictures of Spiral Jetty don’t do justice to the work, which is all about a sense of place. Other works, such as Partially Buried Woodshed, simply no longer exist except in photographs. However, after Smithson’s death, his estate attempted to reprise some of his works for museums, including Slant Piece (above), a 1976 partial reconstruction of the 1969 Cayuga Salt Mine Project, in which Smithson set up a series of eight mirrors in the mine and another eight along the trail that led from the mine to a nearby gallery. Smithson thus brought the reality of the mine, reflected and conducted like electricity by the mirrors, into the gallery itself. Today, rock salt from the same mine surrounds the slanted mirrors in art museums, a pale reflection of the original work but at least a glimmer of once was. Like Andy Goldsworthy, Smithson made his art fully realizing that it had an expiration date. Smithson’s tragic death, like the tragic history of much of his art, reminds us that all permanence, even in art, is an illusion.

An Oasis in the Desert

The Museum of Islamic Art’s main building entrance façade through the palm tree alley. Courtesy of the Museum of Islamic Art.

Like an oasis, the recently opened Museum of Islamic Art (above) in Doha, Qatar rises from the desert to offer an escape from the heated rhetoric of today and promote cultural understanding through art. “The Museum of Islamic Art is dedicated to reflecting the full vitality, complexity and diversity of the arts of the Islamic world,” reads the museum’s mission statement. Spanning three continents and thirteen centuries, the collection hopes to give a fuller picture of the diversity of Islamic art, which most people mistakenly see as being as monolithic as the Islamic faith itself, which is richer and fuller than the black and white ideological battles post-9/11 portray it. Thanks to the vast wealth generated by the region’s oil resources, The Museum of Islamic Art truly is a marvel to look at. Designed by I.M. Pei, the building’s total area is 382,118 square feet, including 45,477 square feet of gallery space. I’m not sure if I’ll ever have the opportunity to travel in the Middle East, but I would definitely put this museum on my must-see list both for the collection and the building itself.


The desert light plays with the geometry of the Museum of Islamic Art. Courtesy of the Museum of Islamic Art.

Pei took great pains to make the museum both modern and traditionally Islamic. The Islamic love of geometrical designs, so similar to fractals, is demonstrated in the interplay of planes throughout the exterior of the museum (as shown above). The architectural images of the exterior of the museum, beneath a stunningly blue sky, beside deep blue waters, and bathed in the relentless sunlight, are simply incredible. No expense was spared in the design and execution of the museum. Even the opening gala was top shelf, with Yo-Yo Ma, my favorite classical instrumentalist, heading the entertainment bill. There’s a great clarity and cleanness to Pei’s design, which makes the most of the surrounding elements, especially the Middle Eastern sunlight, that gives the building simultaneously an Islamic as well as a universal feel. Pei appeals to the senses rather than a particular religious sensibility, helping promote the spirit of inclusion and understanding even before you walk through the door.


The faceted dome of the Museum of Islamic Art features an oculus that captures and reflects sunlight. Courtesy of the Museum of Islamic Art.

Once you come inside, the sunlight follows you, thanks to the oculus (above) at the top of the building’s dome. Whereas the outside of the museum offers all sharp lines and rigid geometry, the domed atrium offers a gentle curve that rises 164 feet from the floor. The dome comes as a surprise to the visitor because you cannot see it from the outside. Like the oculus of the Pantheon, the Museum of Islamic Art’s oculus immediately draws your eye upwards to the great “eye” above. Oculi abound in architecture, but the use of the oculus here immediately connects, in my mind at least, to that of the Pantheon, effectively reaching across and clasping hands with the Western tradition of art and culture represented by the Pantheon’s ancient roots and continued presence in the heart of Christendom and the Renaissance. I also appreciate the nod towards the Enlightenment, as the light literally exposes the reality of Islam and its art for all those willing to see.

Illuminated Qur'an Section. Calligraphy and Illumination by Ahmad ibn Ali ibn Abi Ibrahim. Morocco, dated 1063 AH (1653-1654 AD). Ink, pigment, and gold on paper. Width 20 cm, height 26 cm. Photo credit: Nicolas Ferrando.

Islamic art, of course, is first and foremost the art of the Qur’an. (An example from the museum’s collection appears above.) The Arabic writing of the Qur’an is itself an art form and a devotional appeal to Allah. With all the hyperbole and gross misrepresentations of the past seven years of the “age of terrorism,” we’ve lost sight of the reality of Islam and just how connected it is to the other major religions that have shaped the West. Islamic “extremists” certainly contribute to the fear and confusion Islam often engenders in Westerners, but we need to accept the fact that they are indeed “extremists.” The Museum of Islamic Art looks to restore the core of the Qur’an in the minds of Muslims as well as in the minds of Westerners. Looking at images of the highlights of the collection, including textiles, jewelry, and pottery, I constantly drew connections between the traditions of Islamic art and that of Greece and Rome, which I am more familiar with. In those connections between the known and the unknown, the Museum of Islamic Art looks to bring understanding and, hopefully, peace.


Maqbool Fida Husain (b. 1915, India). The Three Religions of the Book (2008). Acrylic on canvas. The Museum of Contemporary Arab Art, Qatar Museums Authority.

The museum’s inaugural exhibition, Beyond Boundaries, gathers special loans from other museums from around the world to “reflect the theme of cultural diversity in the heritage of the Muslim world” and to offer a fascinating counterpoint to the permanent collection. In addition to the art of the past, Beyond Boundaries offers the art of the present, such as the paintings of Indian artist M.F. Husain, a resident of Qatar. The 93-year-old Husain, the “Picasso of India,” is currently working on a cycle of 99 paintings inspired by the 99 names of Allah. Beyond Boundaries shows the first 20 paintings of the cycle in public for the first time, including Husain’s The Three Religions of the Book (above), which reconnects Christianity, Judaism, and Islam visually as they once were connected spiritually. Just as the Louvre has served as the central repository for the preservation and promotion of Western civilization for centuries, perhaps the Museum of Islamic Art will serve the same function for Middle Eastern civilization for a long time. Only time will tell, but they’re off to an auspicious start.

[Many thanks to the Museum of Islamic Art for providing the images above.]