Curating Islam in NYC

This course focuses on the ways in which museums conceptualize, contextualize, curate and display Islamic art.  In the process, it interrogates the degree to which the orientalist past and the secular present shapes our understanding of the Muslim world.  Students will not just engage with material objects from Muslim societies but also consider the choices museums make about their display and presentation.  These choices, in turn, speak to the role of museums in defining a specific understanding of the “sacred.” Finally, students will learn to thoughtfully and critically pose questions about the roles that museums as public institutions play in sharping public and private understandings of Islam.

The course begins with a general discussion of material objects in the study of religion.  This is followed by a broad survey of Islamic Art which both describes and critiques the category as it has been framed in the Academy.  Students then visit a number of museums to learn about the style and content of their Islamic collections.  The course concludes by engaging a different kind of curation, namely oral histories in the Brooklyn Museum.