What Does the Reopening of the National Museum of Damascus Mean for Syria?

APOLLO MAGAZINE
By Ross Burns

Palmyra, cella of the Bel Temple — seen from the east

The National Museum of Damascus, which reopened in October six years after civil war forced its closure, is one of the world’s great collections of archaeological and historical treasures. The visitor to the museum is greeted by an entrance that could hardly convey a more overwhelming message about Syria’s past. Rescued from the ravages of time among the ruins of the eighth-century Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi in the Syrian desert, the gateway is an extraordinary blend of the range of cultures that came together in the early Islamic period. Like the restored National Museum in Beirut, which became a flagship for the country’s recovery after 15 years of civil conflict, the Damascus museum is being presented as an assertion of the value of honouring history as a regenerative tool. [More]

The beauty of Islamic canvas art

THE FRISKY

Now, Islamic Canvas Art is usually a handwritten quote of Qur’an, done by the best calligraphy masters out there. Islamic calligraphy is indeed an artistic practice mixing Arabic, Ottoman, and Persian designs, based on the same alphabet.

There are multiple types of arts, and each and every has its own purpose. Whether it is a humanism picture that should have a deep and moral meaning or it is a Pop-Art figure, all are beautiful and have their target audience. And among one of the most popular types of arts out there, especially out in the Middle East is the Islamic Canvas Art. There are multiple websites to buy Islamic Canvas Art at, and Best Buy Art is one of the best out there. With tons of hard-working calligraphy artists selling their well-done work that will fit your wall just right it is hard to pick. It shows all the strength of Islamic Canvas Art and the impact the calligraphy has on the Muslim society in general. [More]

The women taking charge in the Gulf's rising art scene

THE ART NEWSPAPER
By Danna Lorch

Manal Ataya, the director-general of the Sharjah Museums Authority

It is no secret that the art ecosystem in the Gulf is dominated by women. Much more than figureheads, there are female royal patrons, experienced expatriates and homegrown professionals leading cornerstone institutions including Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation, 21,39 Jeddah Arts, Qatar Museums and Sharjah Art Foundation. Western observers often delight in pondering why so many women are at the forefront of this scene, a relative newcomer to the global art world. To the women themselves, gender is almost a non-issue. The Art Newspaper spoke to three female directors who are shaping the future of museums in the Gulf about their efforts to build creative communities, embrace inclusivity in the workplace and reveal the relevance—beyond the beauty—of Islamic art. [More]

The Best Artworks at Untitled Art, Miami Beach 2018 this weekend

ARTSPACE
By Loney Abrams

WESAAM AL-BADRY Valentino #X, 2018 Jenkins Johnson Gallery, New York and San Francisco Booth D22 $3,000.00 - $10,000.00

MIAMI---Untitled Art, Miami Beach opened to VIPs yesterday at Ocean Drive and 12th Street in South Beach, Miami. Here are six stand-out works from the fair. Currently based in San Francisco, Wesaam Al-Badry was born in Nasiriyah, Iraq in 1984. “As a young man growing up in middle America, Al-Badry fiercely felt the disconnect between his experiences in Iraq and the refugee camps and his new American reality,” says the gallery. But now, the relationship between Western ideals and traditional Muslim culture forms the bases of his work. Staging portraits featuring women wearing these custom luxury niqabs, the artist displays Western consumerism’s influence on Muslim culture, revealing the tension between Occidental and Arab-Islamic ideologies. [More]

There is an exciting new aesthetic to Islamic art and culture, with talent waiting to be discovered

THE NATIONAL
By Noura Al Kaabi

An attendee looks at art on display at the Al Burda Festival at Warehouse 421 in Abu Dhabi. Leslie Pableo for The National

The role of art in promoting a culture cannot be underestimated. Art has the power to engage and inspire younger generations by giving them a deeper connection to their identity. Through this medium, proponents of Islamic art not only forge new pathways but also strengthen the future position of Islamic culture. There are talented and inspiring individuals in Muslim communities around the world, who are achieving great things with faith-inspired work. Determining what informs their spiritual, creative and artistic journeys can lend an answer to the oft-asked question: what does Islamic art mean today? [More]

Happy Thanksgiving in a 21st century remake of Norman Rockwell’s ‘Freedom from want’

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS

Ernest Disney-Britton

Maggie Meiners asked her friends, a gay, married couple, to pose for her recreation of Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom From Want.” “I want to expand dialogue,” she said.CreditMaggie Meiners/Anne Loucks Gallery

Seventy-five years after the 1943 release of Norman Rockwell’s four images — Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom From Want, Freedom From Fear, artists are still doing updates of the American idea. In 2012, black artist Hank Willis Thomas enlisted photographer Emily Shur to shoot several images that reimagined Mr. Rockwell’s “Freedom From Want.” That’s what led Maggie Meiners, an artist from suburban Chicago, to create a series of her own. Ms. Meiners, recreated the photograph with two married, gay friends serving their guests. On this Thanksgiving 2018, we are grateful for images of a more accurate, complete picture of the American idea. [link]

Damien Hirst's gigantic uteruses are a bold correction to shocking ignorance

THE GUARDIAN
By Hannah Clugston

The Miraculous Journey by artist Damien Hirst outside the Sidra Medical and Research Center in Doha. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

It doesn’t help that the most iconic pregnant woman is the Virgin Mary, and we very rarely get a glimpse of her with a rounded belly. Usually she is glistening atop an alter with a golden halo, arms encasing her newly birthed son of God.It’s with open arms that I welcome Damien Hirst’s The Miraculous Journey, 14 bronze sculptures that depict in vivid detail the gestation period, ending with a newborn. The structures, which range from five to 11 metres in height, document the fertilisation of an egg, a twin pregnancy, a breech birth and foetus. There are no hiding hands and blank faces here, the wonder of the creation of life is on display for all to see. Hirst told Doha News it is “the first naked sculpture in the Middle East … it’s very brave”. [More]

Mohamad Hafez: the artist using artwork to celebrate Syria's past

THE GUARDIAN
By Alexandra Villareal

Mohamed Hafez at the Brooklyn Museum. Photograph: Kolin N Mendez

In Mohamad Hafez’s sculptures, every detail brings a part of Syria to life. A doll-sized porcelain plate represents how people would send food to their neighbors. Syrian and Jewish fabric fragments on a clothes line embody the region’s diversity. And the decorations on a building mimic Greek and Roman symbols all over old city streets. At the Brooklyn Museum, Hafez paces near his work, studying visitors’ reactions. He shoots videos on his phone, or reads descriptions about Syria, Then and Now. But he tries not to reveal his identity. “I feel it’s my duty to be doing this work,” Hafez said. “It’s not a privilege. It’s not a luxury. It’s a duty.” [More]

Fourth plinth: a winged bull of syrup is defying Isis

THE GUARDIAN
By Claire Armistead

From the rubble … Rakowitz’s fourth plinth work, The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist, is unveiled this week. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty

Michael Rakowitz used 10,000 tin cans to rescue a treasure destroyed by Isis. The Iraqi-American, who once made a work out of Saddam Hussein’s dinner plates, explains why he likes causing trouble. The 14ft-long statue is both a one-off statement and part of an ambitious long-term project by Michael Rakowitz, a 44-year-old Iraqi-American who has become one of the world’s most political – and powerful – artist-provocateurs. The idea was born as Rakowitz watched flickering green images of surgical strikes on Baghdad by the coalition – the invisible enemy – shortly after which the looting began. Until that moment, the suffering of the Iraqi people had been objectified, he explains. [More]

The modern Arab artists who have turned to words

APOLLO MAGAZINE
By Raphael Cormack

Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents

‘There are two figures in society whose words are less important than their deeds: the politician and the artist. An Arab painter who sits holding forth about art instead of actually painting is much like the Arab politician who stands on a podium lecturing us about our future history as we lie in our beds.’ It is a truism to say that if artists could express their meaning fully in words they would not need to make art, but it seems impossible to stop them trying or to stop people wanting them to do so. This, the eighth volume in MoMA’s series of ‘primary documents’ on modern art (which also includes books on China, Japan and Eastern Europe), is a vast repository of translated writing and new essays by artists and also academics, accompanied by 49 colour illustrations. It spans the period from 1882 to 1987 and countries from Morocco to Sudan, Yemen to Iraq. [More]

Sundaram Tagore Gallery presents "Lalla Essaydi: Truth and Beauty" through December 15, 2018

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS

"Harem Revisted, #32" (2012)

SINGAPORE---For the first time at Sundaram Tagore Gallery, a specially curated selection of images by internationally acclaimed Moroccan artist Lalla Essaydi will be on view. This exhibition brings together three of Essaydi’s most powerful photographic series: Les Femmes du Maroc, Harem and Harem Revisited. Lalla Essaydi was born and raised in Morocco and educated in the West before moving to Saudi Arabia for several years. The United States-based artist explores issues of gender, cross-cultural identity and the prevalent myths of Orientalism. This exhibition comprises more than 20 large-scale color photographs, including several of Essaydi’s iconic multi-panel works.

Louvre Abu Dhabi draws one million people in debut year

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Doreen Carvajal

The French Culture Minister Franck Riester, center, visits the Louvre Abu Dhabi on Nov. 9. The museum, designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, is celebrating the first anniversary of its official opening to the public on Nov. 11.

A year since its opening, the Louvre Abu Dhabi drew more than a million visitors to its dome-shaped museum that features borrowed treasures by Leonardo da Vinci and Vincent van Gogh from the collections of French institutions. Those visitors were dominated by foreign tourists, with more than 60 percent from other countries — topped by India, along with Germany, China, England, the United States and France, according to the new museum. The crowd figures are still small in comparison to the flagship Louvre in Paris, which is lending its brand through a 30-year government accord between the United Arab Emirates and France. [More]

Nine global artists explore paper in unexpected ways

ARTFIX DAILY

Works by Chun Kwang Young, Anila Quayyum Agha, and Kamolpan Chotvichai.

Sundaram Tagore Chelsea presents The Art of Paper, an exhibition (Nov. 15 to Dec. 15, 2018) exploring the potential of this often overlooked medium. Each of the featured artists employs an entirely unique approach, demonstrating a diverse range of techniques and subject matter. Pakistani-American artist Anila Quayyum Agha, showing at the gallery for the first time, presents wall-mounted laser-cut encaustic paper works embellished with embroidery and beads. Agha’s work will also be on view alongside other internationally recognized artists, including El Anatsui, Kerry James Marshall and Carrie Mae Weems, in Parking on Pavement, presented at The School, Jack Shainman’s upstate exhibition space in Kinderhook, New York, Nov. 17 to March 2, 2019. [More]

Opinion | When all else fails, there's culture

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Nana Asfour

Historic Palestinian dresses were on exhibition at the Palestinian Museum in the West Bank village of Birzeit in March. Credit: Alaa Badarneh/Epa-Efe, via Rex, via Shutterstock

What does it mean to be a Palestinian? In recent years, more and more individuals have turned to one creative field or another to offer up their own answer to that question, in the hope that a better understanding of it will bring real change. “With the continued failure of the political process, many of us now believe that culture is where we should channel our resources, energy and hopes,” Zina Jardaneh, chair of the board of the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, in the West Bank, told me recently, echoing the words and sentiments of a number of other Palestinians I have spoken to in the past two decades. Drowned out by other events, their efforts deserve broader acknowledgment and support.[More]

'A soaring miracle of art' – Albukhary Gallery of the Islamic World review

THE GUARDIAN
By Jonathon Jones

Inner harmony … a detail from The Hamzanama (c 1558–73, India) in the new Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World. Photograph: © Trustees of the British Museum

The best way to get to the British Museum’s new gallery of Islamic art is via the Sutton Hoo gallery. That way, you first take a trip through Anglo-Saxon England, past Celtic gold, Viking jewels and treasures from the burial of a seventh-century king. These artefacts, lurking in shadow, all date from a time that is often called the Dark Ages. Then you step out of that gallery and into a world of light. There is far too much to explore in one review, but then, this is not an exhibition to get a ticket for and see once. It is part of the museum’s permanent displays. At the British Museum, London. Opens 18 October. [More]

Their land defiled, forest people swap flower worship for Quran and concrete

THE WEEK
By Hannah Beech

Since leaving the forest eight years ago, Mr. Tarip, left, has converted to Islam, the dominant religion of Indonesia. Credit: Kemal Jufri for The New York Times

JAMBI, Indonesia — When the flowers could no longer summon the gods, the healer knew it was time to leave the forest. As a traditional healer of the Orang Rimba, or forest people, here on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, Temenggung Tarip had long depended on jungle blooms to conjure the divine for his seminomadic indigenous community. Mr. Tarip said. Mr. Tarip’s conversion was facilitated by his son-in-law, Rahmat, who is from the outside. The child of a family of transmigrasi — settlers from crowded parts of Indonesia who were given government incentives to work the land in remote places like Sarolangun — Mr. Rahmat said he grew up not certain whether the Orang Rimba were human or not. “They stole fruit from us,” he said. “So we taught them the Quran and they learned how to be better.”[More]

Books: Belief is back: why the world is putting its faith in religion

THE GUARDIAN
By Neil MacGregor

‘There is no God,’ says Yuri Gagarin in this 1975 Soviet propaganda poster … The Road is Wider Without God/God Doesn’t Exist by Vladimir Menshikov Photograph: The State Museum of the History of Religion, St Petersburg, Russia

In the 1970s, most politicians in the US and western Europe, as in the USSR, broadly believed that scientific advance, material progress and growing prosperity would lead to the continuing retreat of faith from the public realm. All that has changed. Russia now defines itself loudly and proudly as Orthodox. Putin is ostentatiously devout. Even the KGB has its own church. The whole of the Middle East is caught up in murderous conflicts that are articulated and fought out in religious as much as economic terms. India, whose constitution enshrines the state’s equidistance from all religions, is convulsed by calls for the government to assert an explicitly Hindu identity, with grave consequences for the hundreds of millions of Indians who are Muslims, Christians or belong to other faiths. [More]

ArtPrize 2014 winner 'Intersections' being displayed during 2018 event

GRAND RAPIDS NEWS
By Casey Syke

"Intersections" by Anila Quayyum Agha

GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- A fan favorite that won ArtPrize 2014 is expected to be displayed during this year's art competition in Grand Rapids. The Grand Rapids Art Museum is extending the time that the exhibit "Anila Quayyum Agha: Intersections" will be on display. The museum at 101 Monroe Center NW in downtown Grand Rapids announced two exhibits, "Intersections" and "Mirror Variations: The Art of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian" will be displayed through ArtPrize, which ends on Oct. 7. The showing of those two exhibits had originally been scheduled to end Aug. 26. [More]

Amid an anti-muslim mood, a museum appeals for understanding

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Farah Nayeri

“Albarelli” jars made of enameled ceramic are decorated with an interlacing pattern of flower stems and foliage and incorporate the the historical emblem of Florence. Credit: Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times

FLORENCE, Italy — They were made in Syria six centuries ago, and stand elegantly in a row of vitrines at the Uffizi Gallery here: five ceramic jars that once contained treatments, ointments and scents from the faraway Orient. These “Albarelli” jars are decorated with an interlacing pattern of flower stems and foliage. And at the center of each one is a lily — the historical emblem of Florence. The jars tell the story, in a nutshell, of “Islamic Art and Florence from the Medici to the 20th Century,” an exhibition running through Sept. 23 that maps the long-lasting and reciprocal exchanges between the city and the Islamic world. [More]

Reports of the death of religious art have been greatly exaggerated

LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS

By S. Brent Plate

Mark Rothko (1903-1970), Black and Red on Red, 1962. Oil on paper laid on canvas. 29⅝ x 21⅝ in (75.3 x 54.9 cm). Private Collection © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko ARS, NY and DACS, London

When written in the same sentence, the terms “religion” and “art” tend to turn the contemporary secularized gaze back in time to Renaissance imagery. But while modern and contemporary artists have continued to embrace, or rail against, their spiritual inklings or their own religious pasts and presents, and while curators have responded by tapping into these sources, those writing about the arts — historians, critics, and journalists — have kept their secular gaze narrowly focused. Critics and journalists rarely diverge from the secular gaze when it comes to using art and spirit in the same sentence. And, perhaps ultimately, critics will start paying more attention. [More]