Category: Art

The Ismaili: Video: The Islamic impact on American arts. Dr Hussein Rashid delivered a lecture titled Everyday Art: An Islamic Impact on American Art on 13 February 2011 at the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In the talk, Dr Rashid highlights Islamic influences on popular art in America — from architecture and popular media to poetry and writing — by the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his From Persian of Hafiz II, to Toni Morrison’s portrayal of Muslim characters in her novel Beloved. The lecture followed two exhibitions on Islamic calligraphy at the museum.

Intersections International. Join international fashion icon and social entrepreneur BiBi Russell for a presentation and discussion on Doing Good in Style. Featured in Asiaweek as one of the 20 people to watch in the millennium, Bibi Russell will share her journey from global super-model to a world leader in the fashion industry, and creating the concept of “Fashion for Development.”

Metropolitan Museum’s Moroccan Courtyard Takes Shape – NYTimes.com. Almost 30 years later the museum was embarking on the most ambitious rethinking and rebuilding of its Islamic art galleries in its history, a $50 million endeavor. At the heart of those galleries, which will open in the fall after being closed six years, it dreamed of showcasing the defining feature of Moroccan and southern Spanish Islamic architecture: a medieval Maghrebi-Andalusian-style courtyard, which would function in much the same way such courtyards still do in the traditional houses and mosques of Marrakesh or Casablanca, as their physical and spiritual center.

This installation will feature work by a wonderful artist I had the privilege of meeting last year, Azra Aksamija (http://www.azraaksamija.net/) — Penelope’s Labour — Weaving Words and Images Weavings from the collection of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini Collection shown alongside new woven works by: Azra Akšamija, Lara Baladi, Manuel Franquelo, Carlos Garaicoa, Grayson Perry and Marc Quinn. Exhibition by Fondazione Giorgio Cini and Factum Arte. Curated by Adam Lowe Tapestry is the great example of image and word transformed by the materiality of its medium. For centuries, it was valued above paintings, its precious gold, silver and silk thread combining…

Sunday, March 20, 2011 at 3PM