Los Angeles Champions #Islamic Art In City-wide Showcase

By Nabila Pathan | (Excerpt from Al Arabiya News Special)

The travelling exhibition celebrating American heiress Doris Duke’s collection of Islamic art, has this week gone on display at the L.A. Municipal Art Gallery. The Doris Duke’s Shangri La: Architecture, Landscape, and Islamic Art, showcases a selection of decorative possessions the billionnaire tobacco heiress amassed in her home in Hawaii, from all over the Middle East, North Africa, and the Asian subcontinent since the 1930s.

Organized by the curators Donald Albrecht and Thomas Mellins, the exhibition has more than 60 Islamic art objects that help to tell the story of Duke’s engagement with the Islamic world and the design of her home, Shangri La, in Hawaii.

Some of the items on display include architectural elements from the house itself, like doors, an Indian jewellery collection and contemporary art by residents of Shangri La’s artist-in-residence program including Zakariya Amataya, Afruz Amighi, Shezad Dawood, Emre Hüner,Walid Raad, Shahzia Sikander and Mohamed Zakariya.

“These artists were inspired by Shangri’s architecture and collections and their work provides a modern complement to the show’s historic materials” explains Donald Albrecht on the website.

At a time when the Islamic world is less understood for it diversity of culture, language and history, in the West, the exhibition forms a centrepiece for the current Los Ángeles / Islam Arts Initiative (LA/IAI) , which aims to challenge out dated and narrow notions of Islamic arts. The companion exhibition entitled “Shangri La: Imagined Cities” organised by Iraqi art curator Rijin Sahakian, is part of an effort to widen the Islamic arts category.