Right now, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is in the news due to its hosting of the exhibition “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” which runs through Nov. 15. However, LACMA’s ties to art in the Middle East run much deeper than a single exhibition.
LACMA has recently reopened its Islamic galleries, which now include two hundred new objects on display. Many of the new works of art are from the collection of Maan Madina, a professor at Columbia University.
In 2002 LACMA acquired the Madina collection, considered to be one of the most significant collections of Islamic art in private hands. The collection totals 750 objects representative of the whole of Islamic art, with a special focus on the Arab geographies. With the Madina acquisition, LACMA’s collection is now among the best in the world.
The museum is aware that it has a responsibility to make its Islamic art as accessible as possible. In that regard it has posted images from many objects from the Department of Islamic art online. At the website www.lacma.org, visitors should click to “permanent collection” and then click “Ancient and Islamic Art” to view 11 masterpieces of this genre along with detailed explanations of their history and significance. LACMA also has a special website dedicated to Islamic art at www.lacma.org/islamic_art/islamic.htm and additional Islamic art collections online.
The museum seriously began to concentrate on Islamic art in 1973, with the acquisition of the Nasli M. Heeramaneck Collection. Two important additions, both gifts, occurred in the 1980s. In 1985 the noted collector Edwin Binney, 3rd, bequeathed more than one hundred works, in particular, examples of the arts of the book and ceramics of the Ottoman period.
Approximately 50 glass objects, primarily of the early Islamic period, from Hans and Varya Cohn’s collection were given to LACMA in 1988. The collection has been augmented further over the past two decades through gift and purchase.