The Los Angeles County
Museum of Art houses one of the most significant collections
of Islamic art in the world. These widely diverse arts, from an area extending
from southern Spain to Central Asia , trace the distinctive
visual imagination of Islamic artists over a period of fourteen
hundred years. The collection is comprised of over 1,700 works,
of which some 150 examples are on view; these include glazed
ceramics, inlaid metalwork, enameled glass, carved wood and
stone, and manuscript illustration, illumination, and calligraphy.
Particular strengths of the collection are glazed pottery and
tiles from Iran and Turkey ; glass, especially from the late
seventh to the mid-thirteenth century; and Persian and Turkish
arts of the book.
The museum began to concentrate seriously on Islamic art in 1973,
with the acquisition of the Nasli M. Heeramaneck Collection,
the generous gift of Joan Palevsky. Although the Heeramaneck
collection forms the nucleus of the Islamic holdings, the focus
and scope of the collection have developed considerably since
1973. Two important additions, both gifts, occurred in the 1980s.
In 1985 the noted collector Edwin Binney, 3rd, bequeathed more
than one hundred works, in particular, examples of the arts of
the book and ceramics of the Ottoman period. Approximately fifty
glass objects, primarily of the early Islamic period, from Hans
and Varya Cohn's splendid collection were given to the museum
in 1988. The collection has been augmented further over the past
two decades through gift and purchase, most notably the acquisition in 2002 of the Madina Collection of Islamic Art, made possible in large part by a generous gift from long-time LACMA benefactor and Trustee Camilla Chandler Frost. Its addition has created a new international focus on Los Angeles and on LACMA.
Click here to visit the Islamic
Art collection at LACMA web
site. 
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Highlights from Islamic Art
Browse Islamic Art Collections online
Tunisia, probably Qairawan
Page from a Manuscript of the Qur’an, early 10th century
Gold and red ink on parchment dyed blue
11 1/8 x 14 3/4 in. (28.25 x 37.46 cm)
M.86.196
The Nasli M. Heeramaneck Collection, gift of Joan Palevsky
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Islam arose in the early seventh century under the leadership of the prophet Muhammad. It is the youngest of the world’s three great monotheistic religions, following in the prophetic traditions of Judaism and Christianity. The Qur’an (meaning “recitation” in Arabic) is the holy book of Islam.
Calligraphy is the most highly esteemed Islamic art, perhaps because the act of writing transmits and preserves the Qur’an. Early Qur’ans were written in a type of angular script with letters rendered from right to left in broad horizontal strokes. This script was well suited to the oblong format of the parchment page. Parchment (also called vellum), made from cured and scraped animal skin, was the preferred material for manuscripts of the Qur’an up to the twelfth century, when it was replaced by paper.
Worthy of an imperial patron, this folio comes from a now partially dispersed Qur’an written in gold on blue parchment, perhaps dyed with indigo in emulation of Byzantine royal manuscripts and documents on purple vellum. It may belong to a seven-volume version described in a medieval inventory of the library of the Great Mosque in Qairawan (in modern Tunisia), where the book was most likely produced in the late ninth or early tenth century.
Egypt or Syria
Lamp, mid-fourteenth century
Glass, free-blown and tooled, enameled and gilded
Height: 14 7/8 in. (37.78 cm); Diameter: 11 1/2 in. (29.21 cm)
50.28.4
William Randolph Hearst Collection
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Inscriptions in Islamic art were used to convey information and decorate surfaces. This beautiful lamp, embellished by rhythmic calligraphy and distinctive ornament, was most likely produced for a religious context. The neck of the lamp is inscribed with the first few words of a Qur’anic verse (24:35) that likens the light of God to the light yielded by an oil lamp: “God is the Light of the heavens and of the earth."
Another inscription, located at the base of the lamp, indicates that this object was commissioned by Shaykhu al-Nasiri, whose heraldic emblem—a red cup set between red and black bars—is repeated on the upper and lower sections of the lamp. This design refers to its owner’s former status as a royal cup bearer. Shaykhu built a mosque and a khanqa (Sufi monastery) in Cairo in the mid-fourteenth century. Thus, this lamp was most likely made for one of these structures.
Greater Iran
Tile, 15th century
Fritware, glazed, cut to shape and assembled as mosaic
Diameter: 23 1/2 in. (59.69 cm); Depth: 1 1/2 in. (3.81 cm)
M.2002.1.19
The Madina Collection of Islamic Art, gift of Camilla Chandler Frost
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This tile belongs to the period of Timurid rule in Greater Iran (1370–1506). The Timurids, the last great dynasty to emerge from the Central Asian steppe, controlled an empire that included modern Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, parts of the Caucasus, and western Central Asia. They sponsored the construction of religious institutions and foundations that were often built on an enormous scale and commonly sheathed in an elaborate decorative skin of brilliant glazed tile.
In the greater Iranian world, the primary structural material was dun-colored baked brick; thus glazed tile provided colorful embellishment. The most complicated and time-consuming manner of fifteenth-century tile work was “mosaic faience.” Elements of the floral design of the museum’s tile were cut from glazed tiles of different colors and assembled as a mosaic. This tile was set in place on the exterior of a building, where it joined other tiles or panels as part of a larger, more complicated design.
Click
here to visit the Islamic
Art collection at LACMA web site.
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