by Jon Lackman | 16 March 2006 | Asia, Islamic, Museums
From the New York Times: “What is Islamic art? Can it embrace art and artifacts from Southeast Asia, where Islam has been a dominant religion since the 15th century but whose lush tropical lands were largely cut off from the inspirations of the Ottoman, Persian and Mughal empires? … Absolutely, say the curators of a new exhibition … ‘The deliberate thrust is that there is no one Islamic art,’ said [curator] Robyn Maxwell … [who] was always astonished when the basic texts on Islamic art cover Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and India, and then abruptly stop, rarely mentioning Southeast Asia. ‘That’s a completely European outlook,’ she said, ‘that’s what Western art historians have been interested in.’”
