Articles, reports & dispatches.
Long-form scholarship and short news from the HALI editorial desk — published continuously between the four print quarterlies.
An Ottoman Tent in Wawel Royal Castle
The 17th-century Turkish tent on display at the Wawel Royal Castle, Cracow, is the largest of its kind in Poland, and is one of the most valuable historical mementoes in the Wawel collection and indeed all of Europe.
Fabulous textiles on show in Cleveland
On 30 June 2013, The Cleveland Museum of Art opened its new North Wing galleries with an inaugural exhibition ‘Luxuriance: Silks from Islamic Lands, 1250-1900’, which reveals the museum's exceptional oriental textiles collection to the world for the first time in almost a decade
Daniel Shaffer · 4 min
Flora Islamica. Plant Motifs in the Art of Islam in Copenhagen
For over a millenium, plant motifs in the form of vines, leaves, flowers, fruits, and trees were among those most frequently used in the art of the Islamic world. Many of these works were created in the hot, barren regions of the Middle East, and the lush Paradise as…
Lucy Upward · 9 min
New world record for a carpet sold at auction
A superb 17th century carpet from Persia leads a record breaking auction of carpets at Sotheby's New York, selling for $33m, and putting rugs in the same collecting category as Old Master and Modern paintings
Arts of Islamic Lands: Selections from The al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait, at the MFA, Houston
A selection of Islamic masterworks from Kuwait’s al-Sabah Collection are on display at The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, until 26 January 2014, as part of a long-term collaboration with the Kuwait National Museum, Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah (DAI).