Islamic Art & Science Exhibition in Dallas

The blue and white 13th century bowl above, which is from Iran, is just one of many highlights of a new exhibit at the Dallas Museum called  "Nur: Light in Art and Science from the Islamic World." 

That exhibit will open on March 31 and will explore "the use and meaning of light in Islamic art and science, and demonstrate how light is a unifying motif in Islamic civilizations worldwide," according to a review from Art Dubai. 

The New York Times, in an excellent review, notes that "visitors will first see five bowls and plates, each very different, with rays conveying visual light, including a 13th-century blue-and-white Persian bowl borrowed from the Brooklyn Museum... Next come lamps, from simple to sophisticated, signifying the presence of light around the world."

The Dallas Museum is also the home of over 2000 Islamic art objects that were collected by a private Hungarian collector. The museum gets to keep the collection, as long as it makes it available to the public and to scholars, for the next 15 years.  

That agreement, according to the New York Times, instantly makes Dallas "perhaps the third most important Islamic collection in the country, after the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington."