Friday, April 24, 2015

Persian Carpet @ Aga Khan Museum of Toronto


In the main permanent gallery of Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, a huge Persian carpet is on display. 
This beautiful carpet belongs to Safavid era (16th century).
Agha Khan Museum is a newly established museum in Ontario, Canada which is focused on the Islamic art and naturally most of its objects are from Persia (Iran). 
Surprisingly at the museum's information card, even the International term of "Persian Carpet" has not been mentioned for this huge carpet! 
Actually such works should be categorized as "Persian Art in Islamic Era" but I do not know why some Western are historians were/are so interested to call them "Islamic Art".
 Islam banned sculpting, music and many other things related to art so how we can seriously talk about Islamic art?!
Same story can be seen at Louvre Museum's so-called "Islamic Art Section".

3 comments:

  1. The reason is clear: most of the these museums have been established by financial aids of arabian country, namely Quatar and Emirat. In order to not offend their main arabian supporters, museums prefer to use a general title " islamic art" and not to underline the persian, turkish, or sometimes indian origins of pieces.

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  2. It is a museum showcasing the arts of muslim civilisations. No where does the museum say it is a museum of Islamic art. The media is oblivious to this important subtlety. The whole idea behind the museum is to highlight intermingling and interactions between cultures. In that sense, part of your post is misplaced Regarding the first comment about, it is clearly made by someone particularly uneducated. I'd encourage reviewing information from agakhanmuseum.org and perhaps more from akdn.org - the museum is not financed by anyone in the arab world.

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  3. I agree this is Persian art in the Safavid era. Like everything else the arabs use our art and science and call it "Islamic".But in reality the arabian peninsula has offered nothing but stones and tiers. The "uneducated" ones are those that paint over the art of Iranzamin and call it "the arts of muslim civilisations".

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