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Metropolitan Museum to open renovated galleries for Islamic Art

The Damascus Room at the Metropolitan Museum

The Damascus Room at the Metropolitan Museum

Metropolitan Museum’s new galleries of Islamic Art The most important art museum in America presents its renovated galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia.]]>

November 1, 2011, source: Metropolitan Museum / theartwolf

The new 1,800-square-meter (19,000-square-foot) galleries will house more than 12,000 works of art from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of Islamic Art. The galleries were closed for renovation in May 2003.

The opening of these extraordinary new galleries underscores our mission as an encyclopedic museum“, stated Thomas P. Campbell, Director of the Metropolitan Museum, adding that “the 15 new galleries trace the course of Islamic civilization, over a span of 13 centuries.”

Among the highlights of the Museum’s collection is the “Damascus Room”, built in 1707. Previously known as the Nur al-Din Room, this richly ornamented room was a reception chamber from an upper-class home in Damascus.

A new guide to the collection -featuring nearly 300 works- will be published to coincide with the opening of these renovated galleries, as well as a facsimile edition of The Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp: The Persian Book of Kings.

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Metropolitan Museum to open renovated galleries for Islamic Art