Global Links
Orientation and Orientations: Contextualizing the Veramin Mihrab at Shangri La
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Leslee Michelsen
A celebrated lusterware mihrab (prayer niche) has been part of the collection on display at the Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture + Design since its opening as a public institution in 2002. It is one of six surviving luster mihrabs made during the Ilkhanid period, and one of only two outside Iran. Originally, the mihrab - dated Sha'ban 663 AH (May 1265 CE) and signed by its maker ‘Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Tahir - was located in the shrine of Imamzada Yahya in Veramin, Iran on the qibla wall indicating the direction of Mecca. This mihrab was acquired by Doris Duke from Hagop Kevorkian in 1940 and installed in her Honolulu home, orientated not toward Mecca but along an east-west axis. This paper will critically examine the shifting contextualization and interpretation of the artwork as it moved from sacred to secular environments, and between public and private spaces. How does the museum present additional layers of information about these changing cultural dialogues to visitors? How can the museum both hold space for the visitor’s multisensory appreciation of the work, while allowing space for critical dialogue surrounding the removal and - arguably - decontextualization of a sacred object?
Timbuktu in Mississippi: Representation and Reception of the Islamic Arts in the Deep South
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session David Davis
The first, and probably only, privately-funded museum in the United States dedicated solely to the arts and culture of the Islamic world was founded in Jackson, Mississippi. The International Museum of Muslim Cultures opened its doors in 2001 and has welcomed almost 10,000 visitors annually from all over the world since that date and has hosted two major exhibits, “Islamic Moorish Spain” and “Legacy of Timbuktu.” This paper explores the powerful impact this small museum has had on the local and regional community located “in the heart of Dixie.” Using the concept of the museum as shared social action, and not just an environment to be experienced, I argue that a well-designed and thoughtfully-curated museum presentation of the arts of the Islamic world can address cultural prejudices and result in transformative social action. A visual, aural, and tactile encounter with calligraphy, architecture, music, and the decorative arts can be more powerful than a fiery sermon; more persuasive than a religious debate. What is at work here is the dynamic interaction of past, present, and future. The museum was founded by shared social action in the present (the creation of the museum), to convey a representation and celebration of the products of past social action (the creation of the Islamic arts in Timbuktu), in order to motivate and inspire contemporary and future transformative social action.
Constructing National Identity and Curating Difficult Knowledge at the New Canadian Museum for Human Rights
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Stephanie Anderson
The curatorial function of the relatively new human rights museum is to act as an intermediary between past atrocity and present social justice. However, as entrusted agencies of the state, national museums function as authorities on history through selective recollections that strategically define the parameters of their nations and citizenry. Through the analysis of the exhibits Migrant Farm Workers and Human Rights and Chinese Canadians and Immigration Policy at the newly inaugurated Canadian Museum for Human Rights, this paper explores how museums act as sites of historical consciousness through narratives that convey past, present and future visions of nationhood. It illustrates a new research approach that problematizes state visions that exclude or silence particular individual, or group identities, and offers insights into the practice and implications of Simon’s notion of a curatorial pedagogy of difficult knowledge. This work is pertinent not only to museum studies, but also more generally to the fields of public history and critical heritage studies.
