Islamic Art and Material Culture

On Saturday 9th November, the UK Subject Specialist Network (SSN) for museum and library professionals responsible for collections of Islamic art and material culture held its inaugural meeting at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. This launch coincided with a study afternoon for the recently opened exhibition, Qalam: The Art of beautiful writing.

Curator of the exhibition and chair of the SSN, Dr Rebecca Bridgman, introduced this national initiative which has been established with the support of Arts Council England.

The primary aim for the SSN is to assemble -for the first time- comprehensive data on the contents, locations, cataloguing, and uses of public collections of Islamic art at museums throughout the UK. This will then be shared in a final report and through a dedicated website; provide an expertise sharing and networking service; and develop training workshops, study days, and an annual conference to offer support for museum and library professionals working with Islamic art and material culture, most particularly at those institutions with limited resources, staff, or specialist knowledge in this field. 

Dr Bridgman then led a tour of the exhibition. It is an elegant and informative display, accessible to non-specialists, but also showcasing fascinating historic manuscripts, decorated objects and contemporary art all of great interest to a more specialised audience. The exhibition includes a wide range of calligraphic material including Kufic manuscripts and contemporary photography.

Detail from Burning butterfly from the artist's book ‘Ten poems from Hafez’ by Jila Peacock. On display in Qalam: The Art of beautiful writing. Copyright (C) The Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, UK.

Next, Dr Francesca Leoni (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) presented the current plans for the SSN web presence. This is under development, and will be used as a forum for enquiries and exchange of expertise. As the network grows, the site will be used to share news -including details of events- and eventually to host extensive searchable data on Islamic art collections.

Jenny Wright, the SSN's freelance Mapping Project Researcher, has developed a questionnaire to gather data about the types of objects in these collections, as well as to solicit information about museums' resources, staff, cataloguing and online display systems, how collections are currently utilised and displayed, and how museum professionals feel the SSN could support their work in interpreting and caring for collections of Islamic art. While completing this comprehensive survey will requires some time investment, direct assistance, including phone support and site visits, can be provided to non-specialist curators if they need any support in filling in the questionnaire.

After lunch, the Islamic Art and Material Culture Subject Specialist Network in collaboration with the Islamic Manuscript Association opened the meeting to the public for an afternoon of talks on the history and practice of calligraphy in Arabic script.

Speakers Dr Alain George (University of Edinburgh), Venetia Porter (British Museum), and calligrapher Soraya Syed gave fascinating presentations on varied aspects of this art form.

The SSN’s survey will be open until mid-March 2014. To take the survey or find out more, please contact islamicmappingproject@gmail.com.

Nuqta, an app developed in collaboration with Soraya Syed to share images of Islamic calligraphy