'Arts of the Islamic World' at Asian Art Museum in San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO — SEVEN years ago, when the Asian Art Museum was getting ready to move from its old home in Golden Gate Park to its new Civic Center location, curators found an old rug rolled up on a shelf in storage. The huge carpet was one of 7,000 objects the institution's founder, Avery Brundage, had collected, but the only information about the woolen rug that curators could find listed it as "miscellaneous office furniture."
Yet even a cursory look at the carpet showed it to be a work of great beauty: finely knotted, expertly dyed a vivid red, with intense blue floral patterns highlighted in gold. Experts examined the rug and determined that it dated from the early 1600s and was probably produced in a workshop sponsored by the great Mughal emperor Akbar, who ruled what is now Pakistan and India.
"We found this not knowing what we had," says Forrest McGill, the museum's chief curator. "It had been sitting there for 40 years."
Recently the carpet went on display for the first time, part of a small but exquisite show devoted to exploring the multifaceted realm of Muslim art. Called "Arts of the Islamic World From Turkey to Indonesia," the exhibit, which runs through March 1, mines the museum's collection to showcase 60 of its holdings, many of which have never been put on view before.
The show is also intended as a complement to the much-heralded exhibit "Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures From the National Museum, Kabul," which runs from Oct. 24 to Jan. 25 at the museum, its only West Coast venue. The Afghan show features 228 objects -- all dating from before the advent of Islam -- that had been hidden in the war-torn country for 25 years and were rediscovered only in 2003.
McGill says that a traveling show from a country so closely associated with Islam raised the question about art created in the Muslim world, presenting the institution with a chance to dig into its own collection, which is best known for its extensive holdings of Chinese, Japanese and Indian art.
"Over the decades we have not put a lot of emphasis on the Islamic part of Asia, but it's closely connected to the rest," says McGill. "We want to emphasize the huge diversity of the Islamic world. There are huge, important Muslim communities in places like China."
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