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!