HOUSTON (Dispatches) — It’s been years in the making. Now the Museum of Fine Arts Houston is finally ready to display a unique collection that took over 50 years to assemble.
On Sunday, the museum opened its new and permanent galleries for “Art of the Islamic World”. This is part of an initiative that started 10 years ago to the day.
These new galleries have been endowed by collector Hussein Afshar, and will present for the first time the full extent of MFAH holdings in Islamic art with an extensive selection of Iranian masterworks on long-term loan from the Afshar Collection.
With nearly 6,000 square feet of space, which includes the eventual use of an adjoining garden, the new presentation highlights a trove of major, and in many cases rare, objects never before displayed in such depth. The Museum shows, for the first time, the full strengths of its own collections, and the extraordinary range of Iranian art from the Hussein Afshar Collection.
The distinguished Afshar Collection conveys the rich artistic traditions of Iranian civilization from the 7th to 19th century, in several hundred exquisite paintings, significant ceramics, precious inlaid metal ware, and finely woven silk fabrics and carpets.
The MFAH has devoted permanent gallery space to Islamic art for more than a decade, and the new Afshar galleries nearly double previous display space for Islamic art. Hundreds of objects — exquisite paintings, manuscripts, ceramics, carpets, and metalwork spanning more than 1,000 years — reflect the breadth of historic Islamic lands, including present day Morocco, Spain, Tunisia, Egypt, Türkiye, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.
According to Gary Tinterow, director of the Margaret Alkek Williams Chair of the MFAH, “these new, permanent galleries enable us to significantly expand a cultural home in Houston for art from historic Islamic lands”.
“The new galleries are a culmination of the strong partnership between the Museum, our dynamic Houston communities, and an extraordinary historical collection,” said Aimée Froom, curator, Art of the Islamic Worlds at the MFAH. “Encompassing diverse cultures, ethnicities, languages, and regional traditions, this new presentation, with the Museum’s own growing collection paired for the first time with the Hussein Afshar Collection, will convey the extraordinarily vibrant contributions and legacies of Islamic civilizations.”
The opening of the galleries culminates a major, longtime initiative at the MFAH to develop special exhibitions, new scholarship, signature acquisitions, and dynamic public programs in Islamic art. The extended loans from the Afshar Collection are the second such partnership initiated by the Museum; the first was the 2012 landmark agreement with The al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait, which has placed several hundred objects from that exceptional collection of art from Islamic lands on extended loan to the MFAH.