Islamic Art at the Met

Based on a quick (two-hour) first visit to the new Met galleries devoted to the broadly-defined lands of the Middle East, my favorite object isn’t even in those eleven rooms: it is the painting of a Cairo mosque by Jean-Leon Gerome that is cleverly placed in the adjoining Paintings gallery featuring the Met’s Orientalist collection. Perhaps this is due to the greater familiarity I have with European paintings than with Islamic art, but I think some of my preference is a result of clarity. The Gerome painting creates its own entire world: we see Muslim architecture in the mosque, crafts in the mosque lamps, beautiful textiles in the men’s clothing, we sense the air of the space in the pigeons flying around and above all, we see people (granted, not any women). In contrast, the Islamic galleries themselves are, in the words of the friend who accompanied me, a mish-mash. Plates seem to appear everywhere, as do tiles, sculptures, pitchers, rugs, miniature paintings and Arabic calligraphy. For the scholar or more learned viewer, the organization by nominal empire may be edifying, but if one doesn’t know the difference among Seleucids, Salafis and Deccans, one feels quite lost.
The architectural elements – or what we would call period rooms – are magnificent and by themselves justify a visit. It is when I tried to gain knowledge by reading case labels that I glazed over. First of all, there is a huge number of objects on display. When we later walked through the Greek and Roman corridor we reactively felt how nicely isolated the various objects were. The Islamic galleries give the impression of displaying everything that had lain in the Met’s basement for many years. While this can be useful as a study collection, it defeats the purpose of introducing visitors to an unfamiliar area. Looking at every object would, literally, take an entire day. By being exhaustive, the galleries are exhausting.
I would much prefer a display of masterworks. Instead of five blue plates, show me the best one. I would also like to have seen some comparative displays. This is a blue plate from Turkey, this is one from Iraq, and this is one from Iran – look at how they differ. Maybe organizing the objects by medium or by subject matter is considered too elementary, but it would have helped me appreciate them more, and feel I had learned something from my visit. As it was, I felt I knew no more after my two hours in the museum than when I walked in. It also seemed that there was an awful lot of material from Iran (compared certainly to North Africa, with almost nothing from the Arabian peninsula). I would have liked some explanation of how the Persians, albeit Muslims, compared culturally to the Arabs. Same for the Mughals in India. In short, there was a great opportunity for pedagogy here, and I submit an equally great need, but the Met curators, I guess, feel they are above that.