Word: museum
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Samuel Huntington got it wrong, at least when it comes to art. Civilizations don't clash, but share and mutually inspire. So argues "Beyond Orientalism," an exhibition opening on July 25 at the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia (IAMM) in Kuala Lumpur, www.iamm.org.my. The show examines Islamic art's impact on Western artists, highlighting how Islamic calligraphy, tile designs, and geometrical motifs pop up in the most unlikely places, from Tiffany lamps - some of which drew on 16th century Persian works - to the art of M.C. Escher, whose elaborate drawings of endless staircases and interlocking patterns were apparently inspired by Islamic...
...museum itself, opened by the Malaysian government 10 years ago, focuses not so much on Islam's traditional heartland in the Middle East as on its Asian domains, the works of which are often overlooked in Islamic-art collections. Among the IAMM's standouts is a rare 19th century Koran, made for a Malay sultan with lashings of gold illumination. Precious, too, are the Chinese calligraphic wall scrolls with Koranic quotations - not merely because paper scrolls rarely last, but because so many were buried by fearful Muslims or destroyed by Maoists during the Cultural Revolution. Several are testimony...
...IAMM is a gorgeous monument to the porous qualities of Islamic culture. With its elegant restaurant, storytelling sessions for children and calligraphy workshops, the museum is a neat expression of Islam Hadhari, or "civilizational Islam," Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi's campaign to promote a moderate, modern version of the faith. Designed by Italian and Malaysian architects, the building is a bright, white and sleek place, with fountains, courtyards and a huge inverted gold-and-white dome hanging from the ceiling. "We wanted natural light, to make the place seem open and inviting, especially for non-Muslims," says de Guise...
...collections manager at London's Natural History Museum, Max Barclay has traveled the world in search of rare and previously undiscovered insects. So when his 5-year-old son took a break from a picnic lunch last March in the museum's garden and returned with an insect in his hand, Barclay could not have guessed that his question--"Daddy, what's this?"--would lead to a global detective hunt that has so far stumped Barclay and the world's other entomologists...
...with an insect collection of more than 28 million specimens, Barclay and his colleagues have been unable to identify the almond-shaped critter, about the size of a grain of rice, which has in the past year made itself at home in the sycamore trees on the 19th century museum's grounds in central London. "My field work has taken me all over the world--to Thailand, Bolivia, Peru. So I was surprised to be confronted by an unidentifiable species while having a sandwich in the museum's garden," Barclay says...