Brooklyn Museum NYC throws open Arts of Asia and Islamic World space

Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer

The Brooklyn Museum inaugurated an entire floor devoted to Arts of Asia and the Islamic World, including newly installed collections of Arts of South Asia and Arts of the Islamic World, on September 30.The ten-year renovation project celebrates the diversity and encyclopedic scope of the Museum’s renowned collections across more than 20,000 square feet of space. Renovated for the first time in forty years, the floor now features nearly 700 objects, including newly conserved and rare works of art.

The new home for the Arts of Asia and the Islamic World attempts to create cross-cultural dialogue among collection areas, highlighting diverse aesthetic, creative, social, and intellectual accomplishments across Asia and around the Mediterranean, from ancient times to the present day.

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The newly renovated galleries on the Museum’s second floor feature Asian and Islamic artworks in bespoke casework enhanced by state-of-the-art lighting. The renovations create greater flexibility, facilitating the rotation of installation objects to showcase a wider range of materials, according to the Museum.

Glass Ewer, Iran, (Qum), Qajar period, 19th century.

“We are thrilled for the long-awaited conclusion of this project,” says Joan Cummins, Lisa and Bernard Selz Senior Curator, Asian Art, Brooklyn Museum. “The new installation encourages a rich and nuanced understanding of the collections’ diversity and encyclopedic scope, ranging from Japanese guardian figures to Indian miniature paintings, from Chinese cloisonne altarpieces to Korean celadons.

“All objects were chosen and interpreted with an eye toward deepening understandings of the many facets of Asian cultural heritage. Future rotations of artworks will reintroduce different elements of our fantastic collections to our visitors.”

“It’s been a pleasure to bring the entirety of the floor back on view, which hasn’t been displayed in its full glory since 2012,” says Anne Pasternak, Shelby White and Leon Levy Director, Brooklyn Museum. “We are particularly eager for visitors to engage with our Arts of the Islamic World collection, which showcases the creative and intellectual diversity of Islamic art in religious and secular contexts from different periods and regions in Asia, Africa, and Europe,” says Aysin Yoltar-Yıldırım, Hagop Kevorkian Associate Curator of Islamic Art, Brooklyn Museum.

Copper alloy Celestial Sphere with Stand, possibly Iran, 18th century.

The Museum’s collection of South Asian art includes extensive and important holdings of stone, metal, and wood sculptures, manuscript paintings, and decorative arts dating from the third millennium B.C.E. to the present. The Arts of the Islamic World gallery displays 143 objects from Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America spread across fourteen centuries and mediums including textiles, ceramics, works on paper, metalwork, and glass.

Drawing on multiple areas of the Asian art collection, the 68 objects in the Arts of Buddhism gallery focus on the exchange of ideas between regions and cultures, serving as an introduction to the tenets and history of the religion. This year, the Museum opened a gallery devoted to Himalayan art for the first time. Its small but significant collection of 23 Himalayan artworks reflects the region’s diverse influences and distinctive cultures and traditions.

The 35 objects in the Arts of Southeast Asia gallery represent nearly a millennium of history, celebrating the distinct cultural, aesthetic, and religious traditions of the lands which are now Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Highlighting five thousand years of Chinese artistic accomplishments and their rich diversity, the Arts of China gallery includes bronzes, ceramics, paintings, and selections from the Museum’s collection of cloisonne’s enamels.

The Arts of Japan gallery’s 66 artworks trace over two thousand years of innovation in Japanese art, including Buddhist temple sculptures, ukiyo-e prints, paintings, and lacquerware. A pioneer in the collection and display of Korean art, the Museum has amassed one of the country’s premier Korean art collections and was one of the first U.S. museums to establish a permanent Korean art gallery.

Candlestick in copper alloy from Egypt or Syria of the Mamluk Period, 14th century.

Arts of South Asia and Arts of the Islamic World were the final galleries on the floor to reopen, marking the first time in ten years that artworks from across these collections — which boast more than seventeen thousand objects, including sculptures, textiles, paintings, ceramics, drawings, prints, carvings, decorative arts, metalwork, and other artifacts — are on view.

Previous openings include the Arts of Korea gallery in 2017, the Arts of China and Arts of Japan galleries in 2019, the Arts of Southeast Asia gallery in 2021, and the Arts of Buddhism and Arts of the Himalayas galleries in 2022.The Arts of Asia galleries are organised by Joan Cummins, in collaboration with Susan Beningson (Arts of China) and Alison Baldassano (Arts of the Himalayas).

The Arts of the Islamic World galleries are organised by Aysin Yoltar-Yıldırım and the reinstallation of the Korea collection has been made possible by the National Museum of Korea and Young Hwan Jeong.The reinstallation of the Japan collection is made in honour of longtime Brooklyn Museum Trustee Leslie Langworthy Beller (1951–2017). The reinstallation of the China collection was made possible by leadership support from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation and the Freeman Foundation.

Major support for the reinstallation of the Southeast Asia collection was made possible by an anonymous donor while the leadership support for the reinstallation of the Arts of Asia collection is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet (52,000 square metres), it is New York City’s second largest and contains an art collection with over 1.5 million objects.