A Closer Look at the Collections

For family physician and Museum volunteer Dr. Nurjehan Akbarali, The Canon of Medicine (Qanun [Fi’l-Tibb] of Ibn Sina) is a touchstone that takes her back to her days as a medical student. The five-volume encyclopedia set the standard for Muslims and Europeans in the medical field for more than 500 years. As Dr. Akbarali notes in her video for the #MuseumWithoutWalls, the book’s brilliant author, Ibn Sina, achieved significant advancements in his study of contagions and transmission, and laid the foundation for the quarantine measures that we are living through today.

In her latest Peer Perspective video for the #MuseumWithoutWalls​​, MET curator emerita Dr. Sheila Canby zooms in on intricate flourishes — some hyper-realistic, others fantastical — in an awe-inspiring manuscript painting from the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp. In the distinctive painting (accession number AKM903), the legendary King Faridun, disguised in the form of a dragon, confronts his three sons in a bid to discover each one’s true character.

The first time veteran energy-sector leader Helen Platis visited the Aga Khan Museum, she was “taken with entire experience” — the architecture, the landscaping, and of course, the masterworks in the permanent Collection. But as she shares in her The Public Curates video for the #MuseumWithoutWalls​, it was one object in particular, a candlestick from 14th-century Syria or Egypt, that inspired a “personal memory” for Platis and revealed for her just how interconnected the world’s major traditions are with each other.

Our friend Dr. Patricia Bentley threads together a poetic reflection about her favourite object in the Museum’s Collection — an 800-year-old woven wonder from Iran or Central Asia. “A textile object like this takes me into deep time,” says Bentley, a writer, educator, and complex weaver, about the intricately detailed robe made from silk cloth and metal thread. Click the video to uncover more.

From a distance, Toronto teacher Jen Maus’s favourite object in Museum’s Collection looks like a traditional Islamic garden carpet — but it isn’t a carpet at all. Look closer, she says, and you’ll find a “highly conceptual artwork, full of beautiful contradictions and juxtapositions.” Click the video below to hear Maus describe in her own words artist Aisha Khalid’s Your Way Begins on the Other Side. 

Geology student Niku Darafshi’s favourite artifact in the Museum’s Collection reminds her of her grandparents in Iran and the close but still mysterious relationship artists have with the sights, sounds, and processes of the natural world.  Go here to learn more about Darafshi’s The Public Curates pick, a set of two painted tiles from 17th-century Iran.

In this week’s edition of The Public Curates, our friend Shahzad Cokar reveals which intricately detailed object in the Museum’s Collection transports him back — figuratively speaking, of course — to his parents’ home village in Pakistan. Click the video below to find out.

Selecting which manuscript paintings to put on display takes more than just the turn of a page. With the Museum’s Bita Pourvash and Alessandra Cirelli as your guides, find out the game-changing role of technology in helping the Aga Khan Museum’s curators and Exhibitions personnel manage the objects in our Collection.

Both whimsical and awe-inspiring, the “Court of the Kayumars” folio from the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp is one of the best known and most beloved manuscript paintings in the Museum’s Collection. In this video for the #MuseumWithoutWalls, longtime Museum Volunteer Jane Liu reflects on the beauty of the work’s colourful clouds and mists and how they remind her of a motif in Chinese art.

Museum Educator Lisa Schulte reveals how an object — an engraved elephant tusk with a silver mount, to be precise — in the Museum’s Collection sparked her fascination with Islamic art. “It was a link between historical, cultural, artistic information that I was familiar… and this new wonderful world of this Islamic art and culture I was about to explore.”

The Public Curates series consists of short videos recorded by Museum visitors, patrons, and volunteers. The videos present their personal reflections on an object they have chosen from our Collection.

In the first instalment of the series, Bashir Lalani, a longtime Museum volunteer, shares his story about the journey that his family took to Canada and how this chestnut leaf with calligraphic composition from the collection of the Aga Khan Museum reminds him of that time.

Cut the lights! In a short video for the #MuseumWithoutWalls, Registrar Megan White reveals how our Exhibitions team protects objects in our Collection from light-related damage. Click the video below to go behind the scene.

On Wednesday, May 6, 2020, Dr. Michael Chagnon led #MuseumWithoutWalls visitors on a live video tour of the Sanctuary exhibition. You can relive the experience by watching the video below.

Originally organized by San Fransico’s FOR-SITE Foundation, Sanctuary features 36 woven rugs designed by some of the world’s most impactful contemporary artists. Each carpet is a distinctive meditation on the theme of sanctuary, a term that has taken on new meanings in an age of unprecedented displacement.

Universal Sanctuary, the final of three video walk-throughs of the Sanctuary exhibition, contemplates the ancient human drive to create spaces that encompass who we are and communicate our presence.

Sanctuary is supported by Mohammad and Najla Al Zaibak (Bay Tree Foundation), Partners in Art, and the Global Patrons of the Aga Khan Museum.

In the second of three video walks-throughs of the Sanctuary exhibition, woven rugs mark physical space for mental refuge — for contemplation, introspection, and interpretation — while also reflecting the artists’ individual histories in their designs.

What does “finding refuge” mean in an age of displacement?

Contributors to the Sanctuary exhibition tackled the question — each in their own distinctive way — using the unexpected medium of traditionally woven rugs. Ponder their answers, and form your own, on the first of three video walk-throughs of the exhibition.

On Thursday, March 19, 2020, Museum Curator Dr. Michael Chagnon treated #MuseumWithoutWalls visitors to a behind-the-scenes peek at the upcoming exhibition Sanctuary.

For the exhibition, 36 leading contemporary artists, including Mona Hatoum, Brendan Fernandes, and Ai Weiwei, each fashioned a design inspired by the theme of sanctuary. Then, artisans in Lahore, Pakistan, rendered the images into wool rugs using traditional weaving techniques.

During his real-time walk-through on Instagram Live, Chagnon delved into ideas expressed in the artists’ creations and how they relate to the world in which we live. He also delved into the hidden meanings behind the exhibition’s innovative gallery design, developed in collaboration with MIT-based scholar, artist, and activist Dr. Azra Akšamija.

The exhibition is supported by Mohammad and Najla Al Zaibak (Bay Tree Foundation), Partners in Art and the Global Patrons of the Aga Khan Museum.

Go here to replay Aga Khan Museum Curator Dr. Michael Chagnon’s Instagram Live tour of Sanctuary.