There's no faulting the ambition of this exhibition, which valiantly attempts to compress relations between the Christian West and the Islamic world into a small space. It covers not just the Ottoman Empire — the Muslim power that threatened Europe for more than two centuries — but North Africa and Persia, too. The exhibition is a joint venture with the Islamic Arts Museum in Malaysia, which has a large holding of Orientalist art (a phrase that haunts this exhibition). The funny thing is they, like the other Islamic buyers in the market, seem to be just fine with the genre. There’s a splendid range of Orientalist paintings from Malaysia, and modern takes on them.

Source: The North Africa Journal October 09, 2019 11:15 UTC