Symposium on Islamic Art opens at MIA

Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts and Qatar Foundation, opened the fourth biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art at the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) in Doha yesterday. The three-day symposium,  God is Beautiful; He Loves Beauty: The Object in Islamic Art and Culture, is being held at the MIA from October  29 to 31 and is open to members of the public.Considered the pre-eminent conference regarding Islamic art and culture, the symposium features 12 speakers from around the world, all leading scholars in Islamic art and architecture, whose papers will focus on objects in the collection of the Museum of Islamic Art.The delegates to the symposium were welcomed by Aisha al-Khater, the director of the Museum of Islamic Art.HE Sheikha Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani introduced the symposium and said that Doha is established as a city of culture for people from all over the world.She said: “We welcome experts from around the world who continue to assist us in understanding Islamic culture through the medium of art. Some of the objects in the collection in this museum are among the finest worldwide. Our responsibility at this symposium is to enable everyone to share our love of Islamic art.”The keynote address was delivered after the opening by Paul Goldberger, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and architecture critic for The New Yorker. Goldberger discussed the museum itself as work of Islamic architecture in his talk titled, “Islamic Architecture, Modernism, and I.M. Pei: The Challenge of the Museum of Islamic Art.”The Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art is organised by Sheila S Blair and Jonathan M Bloom who have shared the Hamad bin Khalifa Endowed Chair of Islamic Art at Virginia Commonwealth University since its establishment in 2006. God is Beautiful; He Loves Beauty is co-sponsored by Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, Qatar Foundation, Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar (VCUQatar), the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) and the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA).When selecting the speakers for the symposium, Bloom and Blair looked at the collection in the Museum of Islamic Art chronologically through the centuries and chose objects from a wide range of countries, matching objects to scholars. “The speakers have each picked their object and are asking questions as to how they were preserved, if their authenticity was affected, the nature of archaeology, and what can be found, among other questions,” said Blair.