Among the exquisite exhibits that fill the Aga Khan Museum of Islamic Art, which opens in Toronto on 18 September, is a little Moghul portrait, just over a foot tall, entitled Shah Jahan, His Three Sons and Asaf Khan. It’s an enchanting image by any standard, the five figures, each seen in profile, stand, or in Shah Jahan’s case sit, on a carpet woven with flowers, against a ground of greenery and vivid blue sky patterned with clouds. They are lavishly bejewelled and diaphanously clad. Though it was painted in watercolour and ink, its colours remain bright, as does the gold with which it is embellished.

Read More: Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum Revealed

See also: Inside North America’s First Islamic Art Museum

On a parcel of land shaped like double almonds, where once stood the world headquarters of the Bata Shoe empire, one of the world’s wealthiest men appeared, a scoot up from downtown Toronto. The other shoe had indubitably dropped — in this case, North America’s first purpose-built museum dedicated to Islamic art, made possible by the benefactor-of-the-hour, and set against a backdrop of a time when the schisms between the West and the Islamic world have rarely been more keen.

Read More: Inside North America’s First Islamic Art Museum

See also: Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum, Opening This Week, is a World-Class Showcase for Islamic Art

It’s said that a city – a city like Toronto, say – whose boosters often rely on the adjective “world-class” to describe both its overall grooviness and its particular charms can’t, in fact, be truly world-class. You’re either world-class or you’re not and no amount of huffing, puffing or tub-thumping is going to grant a burg that cachet. World-class, in short, is self-evident and unspoken. Still, you can’t keep a person from thinking something’s world-class. Which is, in fact, what I was thinking one cool, overcast morning last week while touring the Aga Khan Museum with educational consultant Patricia Bentley. The museum, which opens Thursday [September 18th] (a ceremonial opening, featuring Prince Shah Karim Al Hussaini Aga Khan, was held Sept. 12), has been a long time coming, Toronto having been named its home 12 years ago this October by the prince, spiritual head of the planet’s 15 million Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims.

Read More: Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum, Opening This Week, is a World-Class Showcase for Islamic Art

See also: Aga Khan Museum: North America Finally Gets a Home for Islamic Art

There were lustrous ceramics, shimmering skeins of silk, finely carved ivory, illuminated texts and all the latest medical instruments. Lavishly paraded through the streets of 10th-century Cairo, the Fatimid caliphs used the public display of royal bounty to help cement their new capital as the most important cultural centre of the Islamic world. Masters of stagecraft and the symbolic power of art, they developed a culture of exhibiting private treasures in public long before museums began in the west. Now, 1,000 years later, one of their descendants is continuing the tradition – in a business park on the edge of Toronto.

Read More: Aga Khan Museum: North America Finally Gets a Home for Islamic Art

See also: Toronto Set to Unveil First Museum of Islamic Culture in North America

Luis Monreal is a ball of energy who speaks quickly and wields a large vocabulary. Born in Spain to a Catalan mother and a Basque father, he is fluent in French, Spanish, English, German, and (he smiles) “some Arabic.” The man who runs the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Geneva is in Toronto, preparing for the opening of the new Aga Khan Museum. Lighting technicians, carpenters, curators and cleaners bustle through the galleries, scrambling to get everything finished for a press preview Wednesday. The facility, which opens next week, is the first museum of Islamic art in North America. Mr. Monreal threads his way to a glass box inside which glows a gold disc the size of a tea saucer. “Now a major piece in the museum is a very small one,” he said. “This is an astrolabe, made in Spain in the 14th century — probably made in Toledo, Spain, not Toledo, Ohio! The inscription is in Arabic, Hebrew and Latin.” An astrolabe, he explains, is an astronomical tool, a medieval piece of high technology used for navigation. Not far away sprawls a mamluk, a traditional square fountain of mosaic marble in geometric patterns, made in the 15th century for a home in Cairo.

Read More: Toronto Set to Unveil First Museum of Islamic Culture in North America

See also: Aga Khan’s Gift to Canada

The first museum in North America devoted to Islamic arts and culture is due to open on 18 September in an unlikely place: the Don Mills suburb of Toronto, Canada. The Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslim community, philanthropist and chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network, is the founder of the C$300m ($275m) complex, which also includes a community centre and gardens covering 753,473 sq. ft. Eight years in the making, the 113,000 sq. ft Aga Khan Museum seeks to increase knowledge and understanding of Muslim civilisations through the arts of the Islamic world. The more than 1,000-strong collection, which includes illuminated manuscripts, ceramics, textiles, paintings, scientific texts and musical instruments, spans 11 centuries and is drawn from the personal holdings of the Aga Khan and his family.

Read More: Aga Khan’s Gift to Canada

See also: The Aga Khan Museum: An Oasis on the Outskirts of Toronto

There’s something inherently urban and urbane about museums, and that’s certainly the case in Toronto. The Royal Ontario Museum, with its stern, Romanesque revival mien juxtaposed with its new crystal addition, divides the red-brick varsity distinction of the University of Toronto on its west from the swish modern Bloor Street shopping strip to its the east. Meanwhile, the ever-evolving Art Gallery of Ontario reflects its place, all modern lines and glass facades designed by Frank Gehry sitting wedged between the up-and-coming Baldwin Village neighbourhood and the clattering bustle of Chinatown. Both those institutions — alongside smaller museums like the Bata Shoe Museum, Casa Loma, Design Exchange, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, the Museum of Inuit Art, et al — are thoroughly central downtown engagements. So in that way, already, the Aga Khan Museum — set to open on Sept. 18 as North America’s first monument to Islamic art, and founded by its namesake, the founder of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) and imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims — is an outsider.

Read More: The Aga Khan Museum: An Oasis on the Outskirts of Toronto

See also: Aga Khan Museum Enhances Islamic Values

and: The Aga Khan’s New Islamic Treasure Trove

A new and proud chapter in Canadian Ismaili Muslim history is set to unfold in September with the opening of the spectacular Aga Khan Museum and Ismaili Centre in Toronto. Located in the city’s Don Mills neighbourhood, in addition to two magnificent structures (the Aga Khan Museum and a new Ismaili Muslim community centre prayer hall), the project will include a beautiful park and gardens, created by Lebanese landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic. Fumihiki Maki, an internationally award-winning architect, designed the Aga Khan Museum, while renowned Indian architect Charles Correa designed the Ismaili Centre.

Read More: Aga Khan Museum Enhances Islamic Values

See also: The Aga Khan’s New Islamic Treasure Trove

Plenty of museums around the world collect Islamic art — from ornate Persian carpets to Mughal miniature paintings — but there’s never been a museum in North America focused solely on exhibiting these pieces, until now. On Sept. 18, Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum will open in a 31,500 square-foot space designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki, giving visitors a permanent spot to see one of the top private collections of Islamic art anywhere.

Read More: The Aga Khan’s New Islamic Treasure Trove

The Aga Khan Museum announced today that it will open its doors to the public on Thursday, 18 September. The announcement coincided with the launch of the museum’s website. Visitors will be able to explore a collection of over 1,000 objects, representing more than ten centuries of human history and a geographic area stretching from the Iberian coast to China. A vibrant performing arts programme will showcase artists, film, sights and sounds that have never been seen or heard in Toronto. “The opening of the Aga Khan Museum signals a new chapter in the history of museums in North America as the first dedicated to the arts of Islamic civilisations,” says Henry Kim, the museum’s Director. “Its mandate is to educate and inspire.”

Go to website: https://www.agakhanmuseum.org/

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the world’s finest museums, seeks an Associate Curator who will be required to be a specialist in twentieth and twenty-first century art of the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey. S/he will be responsible for all curatorial duties, including: researching, studying, and publishing works in the collection in her/his area of expertise, recommending acquisitions, proposing future exhibitions and publications for the Metropolitan Museum and the Breuer project.

Read More: Met Seeking Associate Curator for Modern Contemporary Art: Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey

The 18th century brass astrolabe, an instrument for measuring movements of the Moon and stars, was engraved by maker Haji Ali in Latin and Arabic, but Hebrew characters are also faintly visible. For Dr Henry Kim, the director and chief executive of the new Aga Khan Museum, this object is redolent of a more tolerant age about which we may have forgotten. “What people often find surprising about art and artefacts from the Islamic civilisation is their secular nature, and how often they embraced all religions and different facets of cultures,” Dr Kim says.

Read More: Matchless Tolerance of the 18th Century Brass Astrolabe

After a yearlong search, the San Diego Museum of Art has named Marika Sardar its new associate curator of Southern Asian and Islamic art. A senior research associate at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and a specialist in Islamic art, Sardar is a graduate of New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts and Rice University.

Read More: SDMA Appoints Marika Sardar

This is the exceptional collection in all America, and it is being neglected. I urge you to make the reinstallation of Islam your highest priority. If you were to create an Islamic wing, you’d find that our holdings – splendid bronzes, excellent silver, majestic tiles, gorgeous carpets, intricate woodcarving, masterful pottery, and glorious miniatures – would become as popular as the European paintings. You laugh? These words were recollected by the influential former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) Thomas Hoving in his memoir Making the Mummies Dance, remembering an exchange with Maurice Sven Dimand, curator at the Met, in 1967. This was no laughing matter, and in fact, the museum created the Department of Islamic Art eight years later, which became one of the most important exhibition spaces on the subject. In 2003, almost three decades later, the galleries were closed for renovation; the public came face to face with them once again on November 1, 2011.

Read More: From “Islamic Art” to “Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia”

The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Union Ministry of Culture of the Government of India have signed a memorandum of agreement expressing mutual willingness to establish a long-term relationship of cooperation, it was announced today by Thomas P. Campbell, the Metropolitan Museum’s Director and CEO. The agreement was signed on March 19th 2013 in New Delhi by Venu Vasudevan, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Culture, and Mr. Campbell, in the presence of Chandresh Kumari Katoch, Minister of Culture of the Government of India. Through the agreement, the Ministry of Culture and the Metropolitan Museum will cooperate in the areas of conservation, exhibition, academic research, sharing of information and published resources, public education, promotion, publications, museum management, and short- and long-term loans.

Read More: Metropolitan Museum of Art Signs Agreement

Why retreat from the sun, surf and shopping of Honolulu to visit Shangri La, a museum of Islamic art in a house built by Doris Duke? Duke, one of the wealthiest women ever to fascinate the world, built Shangri La as a retreat that showcased her two passions: Islamic art and architecture, and Hawaii.

Read More: Doris Duke’s Shangri La Museum