French President Opens Islamic Art Gallery at Louvre

The President of France, François Hollande, inaugurated today the Islamic Art Gallery at the iconic Louvre museum, where thousands of masterworks created over the centuries are on display.

Works from Iran, Spain, Indfia, Turkish, Syria or Algeria show the magnificence and refined aesthetic sense of Islamic culture in a collection that spans the eighth through nineteenth centuries.

In August 2003, then President Jacques Chirac announced the construction of this section, destined to become the eighth heritage department of the Louvre, and five years later Nicolas Sarkozy laid the building’s cornerstone.

During the opening ceremony, Hollande said that Islamic values are among the oldest, most alive, and tolerant in the world.

Hollande also lamented the destruction of Muslim mausoleums of Timbuktu, perpetrated by extremist groups. He said the mausoleums were part of the heritage not only of that civilization but of all mankind.

The new section will be open to the public next Saturday and will present, among other monumental works, an Ottoman ceramic wall 12 meters long, never before exhibited and whose reconstruction took many years of work.

The Pixided’al-Mughira, a meticulous carved piece of ivory originating in Córdoba, Spain and numerous editions of the Koran and medical and scientific treatises will also be on display.

The department of Islamic art is part of an ambitious project of the Grand Louvre begun 30 years ago by François Mitterrand with the building of the glass and steel pyramids, and the project has been continued by subsequent governments.

Image courtesy Louvre Museum

Via PL

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