LONDON, 7 January 2006 — The drive to increase tolerance and reduce friction between cultures was furthered recently when Hartwell Plc., an affiliate of the Abdul Latif Jameel Company, donated a substantial sum toward the renovation of the Victoria and Albert Museum of London’s Islamic Gallery.
The gift of $9.7 million by Mohammed Jameel, the president of the Saudi conglomerate, was a magnificent gesture, and in announcing the gift Jameel said one of his family’s objectives was to increase understanding of the Islamic world.
The misinformation and general misconceptions centered about Islamic and Middle Eastern society have never made for a good understanding between the East and West. The events of the past few years have only widened the pre-existing gulf that so few have attempted to bridge. The attacks of Sept. 11 in New York, the Bali bombings and the 7/7 attacks on London are the focus events on a timeline of violence interspersed with terrorism and racial rioting.
Often enough, it is not politics or policy that can heal each side’s opinion of the “other”, but culture and art. France has an Islamic community that is an integral part of its society, and in 2002, President Jacques Chirac proposed creating a new department of Islamic art in the Louvre to underline “the essential contribution of Islamic civilizations to our culture.” The project will cost $60 million and take five years to complete.
“Obviously, this has a political dimension,” said the minister of culture, Jean-Jacques Aillagon. “It’s a way of saying we believe in the equality of civilizations.” He added that many immigrant youths did not fully adhere to French culture, nor did they know their own culture of origin. “It’s good to show that the republic respects, displays and studies this culture.”
The recent turmoil in France exemplifies this divide between mainstream and immigrant Muslim society, just as the bombings by British Muslims in London in July point to the lack of respect.
Mark Jones, the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, said that the new Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art would “highlight the diversity of world culture.” “We want to undermine negative attitudes that people bring with them. It’s absurd for some people to claim that Islamic culture is a barbaric culture,” he said. “If you see what there is here, you can’t possibly think it is hostile to beauty or education and has no intellectual tradition.”
The Victoria & Albert Museum, which had a magnificent, albeit poorly housed collection of Islamic art, was founded with the aim of collecting art works that could teach the principles of good design to British manufacturers. The Museum’s early acquisitions were influenced by the architect and designer Owen Jones, who especially admired the coordination of decoration and form he found in Islamic art. The Museum purchased examples of Islamic art from the outset and over the following 150 years it assembled one of the most significant collections in the world.
The new gallery, to be renamed the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art, is dedicated to the memory of Abdul Latif Jameel (Mohammed Jameel’s father) and his wife Nafisa.
“We had aspirations to renew the Islamic Gallery because it had not been renovated for 50 years,” said senior curator of the Middle East Collection Tim Stanley, adding that the previous Islamic Gallery looked very dowdy. “It’s absolutely and completely different,” he said, describing the new gallery layout.
“Fifty years is a long time in museum history. The way we are arranging the cases is completely different and the number of objects will be larger. We have almost 20,000 objects but can only show 400 together.” The Jameel Gallery will also contain the latest interactive technology that will enhance the museum experience, along with more information about the objects’ histories.
The gallery was designed by Softroom Architects, which previously designed the Member’s Room and Education Centre in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The new layout is themed, said Stanley, in that the objects in the south of the gallery are arranged according to basic ideas about Islamic art, and in the north end the collections are divided between the three main dynasties.
Stanley said this alternates from the typical chronological layout. “If you do that for the early periods you have quite a patchy coverage - in any museum.”
Mohammed Jameel, president and CEO of the Abdul Latif Jameel Group, said, “It gives us great pleasure to be able to help the V&A display its superb collection of Islamic treasures in a way that will delight and educate more people than ever.”
The collection is certainly exposing more to Islamic art. While the gallery is being revamped, 120 items from the collection is touring the globe as a Palace and Mosque Exhibition, an idea suggested by Jameel and also funded by the ALJ group.
“The idea of the traveling exhibition was that while the gallery was closed we take some of the objects to places where there was no awareness of Islamic art and a misunderstanding of the nature of Islamic culture,” said Stanley.
It has already visited Washington and Texas, is in Tokyo until the Dec. 4, and will later move to Sheffield, England from Jan. 14 till the April 16. “We get to the sort of audience that might never have thought of visiting a gallery of Islamic art. We want visitors to come away with the idea that Islamic art is beautiful, varied and interesting.”
The V&A is one of London’s most eminent museums, and its Islamic Middle East collection is general acknowledged to be amongst the most extensive in the world. The collection dates from the early 1850’s and contains beautiful examples of Islamic ceramics, textiles, carpets, metalwork, glass and woodwork. The Jameel Gallery is set to open in July. Within the museum, it is located right near a frequently used entrance, but whether it attracts just the enquiring visitor or reaches the much wider audience it intends to is yet to be seen.
