On Tuesday the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens a new home for Islamic treasure
A Cosmopolitan Trove of Exotic Beauty
By HOLLAND COTTER NYT 10 28 2011
New York City is just days away from a long-awaited Arab autumn.
"In 2003 the Islamic galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art closed for renovation, and one of the world’s premier collections of Islamic art more or less vanished into storage.
The timing, barely two years after the events of Sept. 11, was unfortunate, if unavoidable. Just when we needed to learn everything we could about Islamic culture, a crucial teaching tool disappeared.
As of Tuesday the learning can go forward. The Met’s Islamic collection returns to view in what are now being called the galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia..." article