Antique

Sultan 'Ali 'Adil Shah II Slays a Tiger (ca. 1660) is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's critically acclaimed Sultans of Deccan India, 1500-1700 Opulence and Fantasy exhibition.

This is an introduction to NPR's Muslim Artists, Now series, which will highlight contemporary Muslim musicians, writers, painters and filmmakers, among others.

When the Islamic galleries of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art reopened in 2011 (after eight years of renovation), it was heralded as a landmark moment for deepening American understanding of the Islamic world. Amid live performances and lectures, the museum's 15 new galleries brought audiences into a physical world of lavish carpets, ceramics and miniature paintings.

Since the Met's Islamic revival, the Louvre in Paris and the British Museum in London have also invested in glittering new galleries for Islamic art. And this year alone in the United States, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Baltimore's Walters Art Museum and the Dallas Museum of Art each has an exhibition dedicated to the genre.

Sheila Canby, the curator in charge of the Met's Department of Islamic Art, acknowledges that showcasing the galleries' objects provides an alternative to the predominant political narrative. She says, "After things like Sept. 11, after things like the destruction of ancient sites in northern Iraq and Syria, museums serve as a place where people can come to this idea of Islam through the material culture, not just through what they're being told all the time."


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