This course explores how museum displays construct cultural narratives for the consumption of the viewer. It focuses on Islamic art. By examining recent (21st-century) Islamic art museums and gallery installations in North America and Europe, the course addresses the topics of art collecting, orientalism, the colonial gaze, Islamophobia, and the current visual narratives of Islam and Muslims through the arts.

In the first part of the course students are introduced to Islamic art through the collections of some of the main international museums including the British Museum (BM) in the UK, the Louvre in France, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Canada, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) in New York. Students will explore the ways in which Islamic art galleries and exhibitions have evolved to reflect academic approaches including post-colonial and object studies. Students will then use the skills acquired in the course and on-line museum collections to develop and propose an Islamic art exhibition thus experiencing the process of developing an object-based narrative, writing it, presenting it, as well as responding to peer review.