During the spring of 2008, the Hunter College Art History program mounted an
exhibition within the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery that challenged many
traditional notions of
“Islamic art.” Curated by Professor Ülkü Ü. Bates and comprised of forty objects from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Re-Orientations: Islamic Art and the West in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Centuries
” invoked the Postmodern idea that the way in which the viewer reads the object
reveals more about the viewer than the subject itself. Arguably, such has been
the case with Islamic art; until a few decades ago, definitions of Eastern art
were formulated almost exclusively by Western scholars. Naturally, when
creating collections, these scholars and curators sought the
“best” examples of the East—often dividing collections chronologically, regionally, by media, and sometimes
by all of the above.
For these early and mid-20th century academics and curators, the “best” examples of Islamic art were those unscathed by Western influence. The ambition
to present museum-goers with the purest form of Islamic art resulted in
collection displays and exhibitions in which many art objects
—especially those created for and influenced by Western popular culture and mass
tourist consumption
—were ignored. The ideological drive towards purity led to encyclopedic displays
of Islamic art that neglected the influence of Western culture upon Islamic
lands as early as the Eighteenth Century, thereby disregarding the Islamic
response to these Western models.
Bates, with her own expert eye, rummaged through the vast and often opaque
storehouses of the Met and selected works that
“re-orient” our conception of Islamic art. One such example, a fascinating 19th century
Ottoman Coin Spoon that was likely produced for Europeans interested in exotic
collectibles, testifies to the fact that art objects often embody hybrid ideas,
which cannot be categorized with ease.
In addition, Professor Bates and several graduate students contributed to the
beautiful catalogue accompanying this exhibition. The essays within investigate
the meaning of these objects, and avoid the aforementioned purist stance in
favor of scholarship that looks beyond hard and fast dichotomies such as
“West” vs. “East” and “Modern” vs. “the archaic.” To the participants’ credit, “Re-Orientations” contributes to and further complicates the definition of Islamic art, while
demonstrating a more general need for re-orientation within the disciplines of
curating and scholarship.
