Comments on: Reinstalling the Arts of the Islamic World /2009/05/26/reinstalling-the-arts-of-the-islamic-world/ Technology blog of the Brooklyn Museum Fri, 04 Apr 2014 18:24:19 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.3 By: Ladan Akbarnia /2009/05/26/reinstalling-the-arts-of-the-islamic-world/comment-page-1/#comment-1192 Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:40:03 +0000 /bloggers/2009/05/26/reinstalling-the-arts-of-the-islamic-world/#comment-1192 Thank you for your thoughtful comments, Ann! Please accept my apologies for not responding sooner, but I am currently on leave for the year out of the country and not on ‘active duty’ at Brooklyn. Our vigilant web team brought your query to my attention, so I will do my best to answer your questions.

First, I am so pleased to hear you like the AIW galleries’ new color and layout; there was a time when beige worked, but it seemed the time had come for a change. I really wanted for the art works to ‘pop’ out and every decision was largely driven by the objective of featuring the treasures of Brooklyn’s collection in a way that would highlight their aesthetic and historic value and ultimately enhance the experience of the visitor. Your reaction was just what we were seeking!

Regarding your question about displaying more material, I would love to do this, but it depends on many factors — often, these have to do with time, staff, and funding, and all decisions related to display must be made 6 months to even a couple of years in advance to allow planning for conservation work, research, and staff availability for preparation of material and actual installing and deinstalling of the art. Displaying an object usually involves, in addition to the curator, a conservator, editor, designer, graphic designer, art handler, and curatorial assistant, and more. Many of these must serve the needs of the entire museum collection (meaning many other curatorial departments), so we must all plan well in advance. The idea is to be more selective and display works in a thoughtful way, rather than put a lot of material out there without proper treatment, mounts, or research. However, I also opted to present more works with short identification labels (which we refer to as ‘tombstone’ labels) with the plan to add more text in a subsequent phase — one solution to allow for the display of more works (I added about 15 pieces to the space in the reinstallation last summer). As a result, my next project for the galleries you visited involves adding general information about the works appearing in some of the cases where you currently only see tombstone labels. As for plans to display more of the museum’s collection in the future, I think I could safely say, yes, we would like to display more, and we will do our best to work toward that goal! It is great to know that there is interest in seeing the material, so I appreciate your mentioning it here.

Regarding the blue and white dish you photographed in Toledo, I assume you mean in Spain, otherwise I would suggest contacting the museum in Toledo. You are welcome to send a jpg image to the museum and it can be forwarded to me, and I will do my best to get back to you in due course or suggest some further reading that will shed some light on Islamic (or ‘Hispano-Moresque’) ceramics (if indeed that is what you saw).

Thanks again for your comments, and I hope mine answered some of your questions!

]]> By: Ann Sedjo /2009/05/26/reinstalling-the-arts-of-the-islamic-world/comment-page-1/#comment-1287 Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:46:51 +0000 /bloggers/2009/05/26/reinstalling-the-arts-of-the-islamic-world/#comment-1287 I recently visited the Islamic Arts section and the new paint color and layout is very visually pleasing (much better than the beige of the past). I am disappointed though that there aren’t more pieces on display! I know the space is limited but are there any plans to display more of the museum’s large collection in the future?
Also, I took pictures of an amazing piece of blue and white Islamic pottery in a church in Toleda in December and would like to find someone who could possibly tell me something about this type of piece. There wasn’t any information with it. Can anyone point me in the right direction? I can email the photos.
Thank you.

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