Art Museum March 4

Decorated Koran

Portrait of an elephant made up of other animals

Example of the calligraphy on exhibit

The exchange program that I went through for my time in Turkey, CIEE, organized a trip to the Sabanci Museum in Istanbul to see an exhibition on the treasures of the Aga Khan. The Aga Khan is an important position and family amongst Shia Muslims, and over the centuries have accrued enormous wealth and art. The Sabanci Museum is currently showing some of the art of the Aga Khan family, it is supposed to eventually be moved permanently to Toronto in 2013, so hopefully anyone stateside interested in seeing the exhibition need not travel quite so far to see these treasures.

People in the “West” often think of Islamic art as little more than calligraphy and geometric shapes, if they think of Islamic art at all. One of the things that I got from the exhibition is that Islamic art is clearly as diverse and talented as the art we are used to seeing in the Louvre or Met. The exhibit includes pottery, illustrated Korans from across the Islamic world, as well as portraits. Our tour guide pointed out one 16^th Century portrait of a teenage boy with a flower in his hat reading a book. She mentioned that when an Italian art historian had visited the exhibit, he said that all the European portraits of the time would have shown the boy in armor, carrying a sword. Just a good example to use for anyone who thinks the Muslim world is barbaric and devoid of culture.

Along with the Aga Khan exhibit, the Sabanci Museum also has a permanent collection of art and calligraphy collected by the Sabanci family. Anyone who even remotely enjoys walking through palaces and mansions or the art of writing should definitely visit.