#IAM2020 Overview of the Islamic Collection at The British Museum

As part of Islamophobia Awareness Month MEND Central London invited the British Museum to give a virtual presentation for our Islamic Art Event.

The British Museum works on building relationships with and for local communities including those who are often marginalised. They aim to provide unique learning opportunities, to celebrate contributions from societies and to remove barriers of participation. The museum does this through providing facilitated sessions, study days, private exhibition views, and collaborating with local groups to bring in perspectives and new ideas.

Guest speaker Laura Lewis who is the Head of Community Partnerships at the British Museum, spoke about the background of the museum from when it was founded in 1753 to the present.

Laura spoke of the various galleries at the museum, some of which hold ancient sculptures, whilst others hold artefacts that represent people and cultures across the world. All of these tell stories from how items were made, by who and how they were used, collected and/or interpreted.

Laura gave an overview of a project undertaken with the  Islamic World across a 3 month period, which included 6 workshops and volunteers who were mostly from the Muslim community. Objects were researched and selected to then showcase to the community to evoke interest and thought provoking discussion.

Laura introduced the Islamic World gallery: the Albukhary Foundation gallery which opened in 2018. The collection comprises of items from the 7th century to the present, including archeological artefacts, paintings, vessels, textiles, jewellery, coins, contemporary art and objects of daily life.

The diverse collection has over 100,000 objects spanning from West Africa to South East Asia! Example images were shown of some of these beautiful and significant items.

Laura also mentioned that in celebration of the opening of the Islamic World gallery, British contemporary artist Idris Khan (OBE) who shares both Welsh and Pakistani-Muslim heritage, created ’21 Stones’, an installation of twenty one paintings. Each piece is made with a unique piece of poetry, stamped with blue oil paint on paper.
Two major forms of Islamic Art are calligraphy and geometry. Geometry is thought to be used to represent the nature of objects by their spiritual qualities and to help believers reflect on life and creation. Islamic Art is said to seek to portray the meaning and essence of things rather than just the physical form.

We had an interesting little Q&A at the end.

Laura agreed that is is important to review how history is educated to the community in regards to where certain museum objects have come from and how they may have been obtained, as well reviewing the use of language that may have originated from prejudice and may no longer be appropriate to use, such as the use of the title ‘Islamic World’ which was coined upon Muslims by the crusaders. Laura acknowledged this was definitely something to be fed back to the museum.
We asked Laura is she had a favourite object that is part of the Islamic collection, to which she responded that something new can be appreciated every time you see the collection, which we’re sure is something a lot of us can agree with!

To view the webinar please follow the link:
https://fb.watch/1W8FNxM4AU/
To view the British Museum’s page about the Islamic World gallery: Islamicworld.britishmuseum.org
The British Museum hopes to re-open to the public soon following the most recent lockdown.