Aga Khan Museum - TO

Activities of the Imam and the Noorani family.
Post Reply
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/the ... f-toronto/

The Aga Khan Museum: An oasis on the outskirts of Toronto

North America’s first museum for Islamic art is a stunner—and something of an outsider. Given its mission, that’s just fine.

Adrian Lee

September 9, 2014

There’s something inherently urban and urbane about museums, and that’s certainly the case in Toronto. The Royal Ontario Museum, with its stern, Romanesque revival mien juxtaposed with its new crystal addition, divides the red-brick varsity distinction of the University of Toronto on its west from the swish modern Bloor Street shopping strip to its the east. Meanwhile, the ever-evolving Art Gallery of Ontario reflects its place, all modern lines and glass facades designed by Frank Gehry sitting wedged between the up-and-coming Baldwin Village neighbourhood and the clattering bustle of Chinatown. Both those institutions—alongside smaller museums like the Bata Shoe Museum, Casa Loma, Design Exchange, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, the Museum of Inuit Art, et al—are thoroughly central downtown engagements.

So in that way, already, the Aga Khan Museum—set to open on Sept. 18 as North America’s first monument to Islamic art, and founded by its namesake, the founder of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) and imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims—is an outsider. The museum, a gleaming white Brazilian granite crown, is just off the Don Valley Parkway in a suburb eight kilometres outside of the city proper, a good half-hour bus ride from the nearest subway station. Nearby, retirement towers with neat gardens and shiny high-rises stand like obelisks amid a modernist bloc of corporate offices of either sallow taupe or glittering blue.

But that distance, and its distinction from its surroundings, is all part of the museum’s appeal. ”The idea of an oasis—the sense that, once you enter it, you’re in a different place—is very much a part of the overall desire,” said Henry Kim, the museum’s director. He cites Al-Azhar Park in Cairo—another AKDN project—as a place that takes you outside the stresses of the big city. “It’s amazing—suddenly, your day changes from being in the middle of noise and crowds, and suddenly you’re in an open space.”

Toronto was the second choice for the museum’s location—planning permissions squashed plans to build it in London, on a prime downtown plot just outside the Palace of Westminster—but now, the pleasure of this open 6.8-hectare campus is what drives the museum’s sensibility, and the amount of space informs the building’s design by Pritzker prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki, hand-picked by the Aga Khan. With the lush gardens and the five burbling reflective pools outside its front door and its inner-sanctum, open-air courtyard—entered from inside the building and ringed by walls of glass and wooden latticework so that light from outside projects dancing shadows into the museum over the course of the day—it is clear that this is a labour of love.

The museum brought in an all-star team to usher in this unique creation, from Kim, who was responsible for the major redevelopment of the University of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, to Adrien Gardère, an esteemed museologist who has worked at the Louvre in Paris. One section of the permanent exhibit features illustrated pages from the Shah-Nameh, the Persian book of kings and heroes, and includes an isolated “sound shower” reading of its pages. The museum, precisely positioned at 45 degrees solar north so that every surface receives sunlight over the course of the day, boasts a facade that is gridded in exact metre-long blocks of Brazilian granite from top to bottom. Kim says the Aga Khan, an architecture aficionado, was so involved in the process that he himself selected the iridescent granite cubes. Lebanese-Serbian landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic’s public gardens were inspired by the ones in ancient Persia and Spain, right down to his decision to eschew acrylic paints, which would lack the long-term lustre of those historic spaces. They are telltale, loving flourishes befitting the ground-up founding of an entirely new building, devoted to Islamic arts.

“Starting from scratch, tailor-making this to what we want, that’s the real joy,” said Kim. “The challenge, of course, is getting the museum known by people.”

That’s where a tight focus will benefit the museum, and a tight focus it will have: celebrating art from Muslim history, an especially crucial task at a time when news cycles are dominated with war scenes and upheaval in the Middle East. The fact that there aren’t as many museums in Toronto as, say, London, will draw art lovers to the Don Mills suburb, says Kim, and will benefit the main mission: teaching non-Muslims about the oft-hidden nuances of Islam and its rich, diverse history.

The challenge, then, is to accurately reflect Muslim cultures, when there is no single, simple experience. “This is unprecedented. We’ve never had in any country a museum with this diverse a set of populations—Lebanese, Persians, Pakistanis, Egyptians, and more—all living in one city with one institution that represents them all,” said Kim. “There is the tendency among museum curators—and I’ve been guilty of it in the past—of creating exhibitions that are kind of like buffets. You take a little bit from different countries and you add it all together and call it an exhibit about pilgrimage or faith or something. It’s a great way of being cross-cultural, but the problem is it doesn’t focus on one culture over another; it’s being a little bit too fair.”

So instead, a new tactic: the museum will go community by community, starting with Pakistani contemporary art, heading into China then Mughal India then Iran, among others, cycling through these places and cultures every three or four months so that all communities are represented within five years—a hyperactive pace in comparison to the languorous, nearly year-long exhibition rate espoused by most museums. “This will allow them to celebrate what is likely to appeal to specific communities, and really engage.”

Another strategy is to make the collection relevant through the performing arts, with the goal of hosting concerts and festivals showcasing Muslim-Canadian artists, as well as an artist residency program for young Muslims. ”I grew up in Vancouver, and one of the things I would have really loved would be a public space where I could see my own cultural practices reflected, where I could proudly share my heritage with my friends, and find my own identity. That would have been a powerful thing for me,” said Amirali Alibhai, the head of performing arts for the museum. ”Finally—a place where I can take my children or my grandchildren and share something of my cultural heritage with them, and where I can learn something new as well.”

Indeed, while the building is something of a beautiful monolith—all smooth-edged and minimalist—it cannot be a monolith in its core mission: bringing the diversity of Islam and its oft-underseen artwork to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. “In a museum that comes from the Aga Khan Developmental Network—a network that believes in pluralism and peace amongst nations and amongst people—I think our collections reflect that,” said Linda Milrod, the head of exhibitions. ”There’s going to be a lot of people in Toronto who will see themselves in this museum in a way they have not been able to see themselves in other museums before. And that’s going to feel really good.”

So if the museum is something of an outsider, then, well, good: that attitude might just be ideal for the place to succeed in its mission to bring people inside.
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/09/09 ... h-america/

Toronto set to unveil first museum of Islamic culture in North America
Republish Reprint

Peter Kuitenbrouwer | September 9, 2014 7:05 PM ET

The Aga Khan Foundation will be opening a new museum, cultural centre and prayer hall on Toronto's Wynford Drive next week.

Peter J. Thompson/National Post

The Aga Khan Foundation will be opening a new museum, cultural centre and prayer hall on Toronto's Wynford Drive next week.


Luis Monreal is a ball of energy who speaks quickly and wields a large vocabulary. Born in Spain to a Catalan mother and a Basque father, he is fluent in French, Spanish, English, German, and (he smiles) “some Arabic.”
Peter J. Thompson/National Post
Peter J. Thompson/National PostA woman walks past art work made by Pakastani artist Aisha Khalid at the soon to be opened Aga Khan Museum.

The man who runs the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Geneva is in Toronto, preparing for the opening of the new Aga Khan Museum.

Lighting technicians, carpenters, curators and cleaners bustle through the galleries, scrambling to get everything finished for a press preview Wednesday. The facility, which opens next week, is the first museum of Islamic art in North America.

Mr. Monreal threads his way to a glass box inside which glows a gold disc the size of a tea saucer.

“Now a major piece in the museum is a very small one,” he said. “This is an astrolabe, made in Spain in the 14th century — probably made in Toledo, Spain, not Toledo, Ohio! The inscription is in Arabic, Hebrew and Latin.”

An astrolabe, he explains, is an astronomical tool, a medieval piece of high technology used for navigation. Not far away sprawls a mamluk, a traditional square fountain of mosaic marble in geometric patterns, made in the 15th century for a home in Cairo.

Then there’s a 12th-century Afghan candlestick “for a very big candle.” Another case displays white ceramic pots with blue glaze. “These are produced in Syria in the 14th century,” said Mr. Monreal.

In a grand hall, workers with a mobile crane have just hung a tapestry pierced in an intricate pattern with 1.2-million pins. The museum commissioned the piece from Aisha Khalid, an artist based in Lahore, Pakistan, who is here supervising the installation.

Syria. Egypt. Afghanistan. Pakistan. These place-names drip with blood in 2014, conjuring images of unrest, protest, bombings and civil war. The Aga Khan Museum, which opens Sept. 18, offers a welcome antidote to these clichés through art that celebrates the rich cultural history of the Islamic world.
Peter J. Thompson/National Post
Peter J. Thompson/National PostA Koran on display at the soon to be opened Aga Khan Museum.

The building’s architect, Fumihiko Maki of Japan, has used geometric patterns inspired by the great mosques of classical Islam, repeating them in the inlaid floor of the courtyard, etched glass, and wood screens in the auditorium.

All this is an intellectual investment by the Swiss-based Aga Khan Development Network, a sprawling non-profit empire, employing 80,000 people in 30 countries, headed by one of the world’s lesser-known royals, Prince Karim Aga Khan, 77. Lesser-known but well-to-do, the 49th Aga Khan lives on an estate called Aiglemont, north of Paris, and owns hundreds of racehorses. He also has private investments; in 2010 Forbes magazine put his personal fortune at US$800-million. He is not a household name in Canada — yet.

Claiming direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad, the Aga Khan is the spiritual leader of an estimated 15 million Ismaili Muslims, thousands of whom came to Canada to escape persecution in East Africa in the 1970s. Today about 100,000 of them call Canada home.

Lately, the Aga Khan has spent time and money in this country. He addressed Parliament in February; recently the government of Canada gave his network $30-million and a 99-year lease on the former Canadian war museum in Ottawa to establish a Global Centre for Pluralism, a joint venture between the Aga Khan’s network and the government. In May, he spoke at the Every Woman Every Child conference in Toronto.
Peter J. Thompson/National Post
Peter J. Thompson/National PostThe Aga Khan Museum's auditorium stairs

About a decade ago, his network bought seven hectares of land north of downtown Toronto from the Bata family. It angered some when it knocked down the Bata Shoe headquarters, a John P. Parkin building that some compared to the Acropolis in Athens.

“It resembled the Acropolis in the sense that it was on a hill,” Mr. Monreal said. “We had a very fruitful dialogue with the architectural gotha of Toronto.” (He uses gotha, a German word, to mean elite or intelligentsia.)

“We said, ‘If you accept that this building goes, we will provide two buildings that will add to the architecture of Toronto.’ “

The Aga Khan’s network kept its promise. The museum shares the site with the Ismaili

Centre Toronto, designed by the Indian architect Charles Correa, which includes a jamatkhama, or Ismaili prayer hall. Between the two buildings spreads a park with five huge reflecting pools, above a parking garage for 600 cars. The investment in the site totals $300-million.

On Friday the Aga Khan visits Toronto to open the museum. It is a welcome addition to the cultural landscape.

National Post
kassambhai
Posts: 64
Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2013 8:10 pm

Post by kassambhai »

Global News in Toronto gets a tour of the museum.
Enjoy the video.

http://globalnews.ca/news/1555084/watch ... an-museum/
kassambhai
Posts: 64
Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2013 8:10 pm

Post by kassambhai »

Aga Khan Museum readies for visit of the man himself
By: Murray Whyte Visual arts, Published on Wed Sep 10 2014

The leaf blowers and sod-edgers roared and sliced in earnest Wednesday morning outside the Aga Khan Museum, the shimmering new hub of Muslim culture perched on a berm of neatly manicured grass alongside the Don Valley Parkway.

Both outside and in, where museum staff busily primped the museum’s galleries, still not quite fully installed, amid clusters of international press being given a first glimpse, a certain urgency reigned. The museum won’t open to the public until Sept. 18, but staff and, indeed, the entire Ismaili Muslim community, had a far more pressing date on their agenda: this Friday, when the museum’s founder and namesake, Prince Karim Al Husseini Aga Khan IV, will arrive to personally and ceremonially declare the museum open.

To draw a comparison that’s still not quite equal, this is a royal visit that, for Anglophiles, would roll Queen Elizabeth, Prince William, Kate Middleton and baby George all into one. The Aga Khan, a 77-year old billionaire living north of Paris, is both the imam, or spiritual leader, of roughly 15 million Ismaili Muslims worldwide (and some 40,000 here in Ontario) and a towering international force for good far beyond his religious role.

Through his agency, the Aga Khan Development Network, he employs 80,000 development workers in some of the most impoverished parts of the world. He runs schools and provides health care not just to Muslim communities, but to people of all faiths in a mission central to his core values: that education and understanding are the only pathways to a civil society.

Which brings us back to the museum, a monument to that mission of cross-fertilization and tolerance of cultural difference. The museum, director and CEO Henry S. Kim said, will help shed light on the fact that the Muslim world is vast, diverse and largely unrepresented in western culture. “The object of the collection is to highlight objects drawn from every era and every region of the Muslim world,” he said. “People need to understand that something lies between East and West, and this is the Muslim world.”
His words were echoed by Luis Monreal who, as the general manager of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, is one of his highness’s chief lieutenants.

“The museum started from a very clear strategic purpose,” he said. “In his highness’s view, education is the vector of development. Our western societies do not know the world of Islam and Muslims.”
So why a museum? “A museum,” he said, “touches an emotional intelligence. Museums can have an educational impact that is direct, different from the cut and dried language of books.”

Whatever its strategic purpose, culturally, this is no token effort. The museum opens publicly next week with a pair of exhibitions: The Garden of Ideas, a show of contemporary artists from Pakistan, and In Search of the Artist, a showcase of the its permanent collection of 1,000-plus pieces spanning 1,400 years of Muslim culture stretching from Spain to Indonesia.

When it opens, this exhibition will showcase why the Aga Khan Museum will instantly become perhaps the most significant hub of Islamic culture in North America. Its collections are among the world’s best. An array of miniature manuscript paintings dating back as far as the 15th century, many of which are to be on display at opening, are perhaps the best to be found anywhere.
And they’re here? Well, of course.

“Canada is the global model for success for diversity and Toronto is the heart of this,” Kim says. “So from my point of view, the best question is, why not?”

Source: http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/vi ... mself.html
kassambhai
Posts: 64
Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2013 8:10 pm

Post by kassambhai »

Toronto CityTV news gets a tour of the museum.
Enjoy the video.

http://www.citynews.ca/2014/09/10/aga-k ... next-week/
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/vi ... mself.html


Aga Khan Museum readies for visit of the man himself

His highness Prince Karim Al Husseini Aga Khan IV set to inaugurate his new museum in Don Mills on Sept. 12


By: Murray Whyte Visual arts, Published on Wed Sep 10 2014

The leaf blowers and sod-edgers roared and sliced in earnest Wednesday morning outside the Aga Khan Museum, the shimmering new hub of Muslim culture perched on a berm of neatly manicured grass alongside the Don Valley Parkway.

Both outside and in, where museum staff busily primped the museum’s galleries, still not quite fully installed, amid clusters of international press being given a first glimpse, a certain urgency reigned. The museum won’t open to the public until Sept. 18, but staff and, indeed, the entire Ismaili Muslim community, had a far more pressing date on their agenda: this Friday, when the museum’s founder and namesake, Prince Karim Al Husseini Aga Khan IV, will arrive to personally and ceremonially declare the museum open.

To draw a comparison that’s still not quite equal, this is a royal visit that, for Anglophiles, would roll Queen Elizabeth, Prince William, Kate Middleton and baby George all into one. The Aga Khan, a 77-year old billionaire living north of Paris, is both the imam, or spiritual leader, of roughly 15 million Ismaili Muslims worldwide (and some 40,000 here in Ontario) and a towering international force for good far beyond his religious role.

Through his agency, the Aga Khan Development Network, he employs 80,000 development workers in some of the most impoverished parts of the world. He runs schools and provides health care not just to Muslim communities, but to people of all faiths in a mission central to his core values: that education and understanding are the only pathways to a civil society.

Which brings us back to the museum, a monument to that mission of cross-fertilization and tolerance of cultural difference. The museum, director and CEO Henry S. Kim said, will help shed light on the fact that the Muslim world is vast, diverse and largely unrepresented in western culture. “The object of the collection is to highlight objects drawn from every era and every region of the Muslim world,” he said. “People need to understand that something lies between East and West, and this is the Muslim world.”

His words were echoed by Luis Monreal who, as the general manager of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, is one of his highness’s chief lieutenants.

The Aga Khan Museum's collection includes 1,000-plus pieces spanning 1,400 years of Muslim culture stretching from Spain to Indonesia.

“The museum started from a very clear strategic purpose,” he said. “In his highness’s view, education is the vector of development. Our western societies do not know the world of Islam and Muslims.”

So why a museum? “A museum,” he said, “touches an emotional intelligence. Museums can have an educational impact that is direct, different from the cut and dried language of books.”

Whatever its strategic purpose, culturally, this is no token effort. The museum opens publicly next week with a pair of exhibitions: The Garden of Ideas, a show of contemporary artists from Pakistan, and In Search of the Artist, a showcase of the its permanent collection of 1,000-plus pieces spanning 1,400 years of Muslim culture stretching from Spain to Indonesia.

When it opens, this exhibition will showcase why the Aga Khan Museum will instantly become perhaps the most significant hub of Islamic culture in North America. Its collections are among the world’s best. An array of miniature manuscript paintings dating back as far as the 15th century, many of which are to be on display at opening, are perhaps the best to be found anywhere.

And they’re here? Well, of course.

“Canada is the global model for success for diversity and Toronto is the heart of this,” Kim says. “So from my point of view, the best question is, why not?”
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commenta ... diqui.html

Thursday, September 11, 2014

12:41 AM EDT

Opinion / Commentary

Aga Khan Museum will prove to be of historic significance: Siddiqui

Aga Khan Museum in Toronto sends a message of peace and pluralism to the world at a time of fraught relations between the West and Muslims.


By: Haroon Siddiqui Columnist, Published on Wed Sep 10 2014

The $300 million Aga Khan Museum on Wynford Dr. — highly visible from the Don Valley Parkway — is more than a stunning architectural and cultural addition to Toronto.

It represents a historic turning point for Canada — sending a bold political and social message of peace and pluralism to the world at a time of fraught relations between the West and Islam/Muslims.

The museum is to be inaugurated on Friday, a day after the 13th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, and amid daily accounts of terrorism and wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and elsewhere. The museum, which opens to the public Sept. 18, offers the beauty and diversity of Islamic cultures and civilizations through the ages.

The museum was planned for London but ran into bureaucratic hurdles. The Aga, spiritual leader of Shiite Ismaili Muslims, could have located it anywhere — in Europe, which is where he lives and works (France and Switzerland) or Africa or Asia (which is where much of his nearly $1 billion development and cultural work is done) or the United States. He chose Canada instead as a tribute to our pluralism and also to make a contribution to it “in the best way possible.”

England’s loss is Canada’s gain.

This is no ordinary museum.
It has not cost Canadian taxpayers a penny.
It is an architectural jewel, inspired by great Islamic structures and taking its inspiration from the Qur’anic theme of light, “God is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth,” light that basks all humans equally, and that lights up the heart and soul, etc.

It uses the familiar geometric patterns of Muslim lands to let in all the light possible. But it has no minarets and no huge domes.

“His Highness did not want this building to use overtly Islamic forms or references,” reveals architect Fumihiko Maki of Japan. “He wanted to have a modern building appropriate to its context.” References to Islam are “sublimated.”

That’s not just an issue of esthetics for the Aga Khan. It is prudent in this age of hysteria against things overtly Islamic. (That may be wise for a minority but it cannot be public policy in a democratic state with equality for all faiths. Such a polity cannot have steeples but ban minarets and temple pillars to bow to the bigotry of the time.)
The museum is the first in the western world dedicated to Islamic arts and objects.

It houses the Aga Khan family collection of about 1,000 rare objects, spanning from the 8th to the 20th century. About 300 will be on display at any given time. Concurrently, there will be two temporary exhibitions showcasing arts from Muslim lands. First up: Contemporary Arts from Pakistan, and one introducing great Muslim artists through the centuries unknown in the West.
The museum aims to “bridge the growing divide of misunderstanding between the East and West,” says the Aga Khan, 77.

It showcases the diversity of Muslims not only by race, language and ethnicity but also by civilizations and theological orientation, such as the majority Sunnis and minority Shiites and sub-sects, and differing interpretations of the Qur’an.
The museum will also hold concerts, movies, festivals, seminars, etc., at its 350-seat auditorium. Many newer Canadians would be able to see themselves in the programs in a way that “I couldn’t see myself growing up in Vancouver,” says Amirali Alibhai, head of performing arts.
New museums must slowly build their reputation but this one comes with one. It brings here what’s already well-known, having been exhibited in Geneva, Parma, London, Paris, Lisbon, Toledo, Berlin and elsewhere.

The project spotlights both the Aga Khan and his Ismaili community, and Canada’s increasing partnership with them.

He is an honorary companion of the Order of Canada as well as an honorary Canadian citizen.

Canada is a partner in many of his initiatives for advancing economic development in some of the poorest parts of the world: building schools and universities; restoring historic Islamic cities, sites and gardens; and advancing architectural excellence (through the prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture and the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard and MIT, Boston).

He runs a mini-United Nations, with its own small diplomatic corps under bilateral agreements with several states. Of his 11 “representatives,” ambassadors, four are Canadian — Nurjehan Mawani, Aziz Bhaloo, Munir Merali and Shams Lakha. A fifth, Firoz Rasul is president of Aga Khan Universities.

The Don Mills project follows the Aga Khan’s Centre for Pluralism, Ottawa, designed to distil Canada’s multicultural wisdom and export it to the world. (It will be shifted to the Canadian War Museum, which he is restoring.) Ottawa is also the locale of an Aga Khan “delegation,” i.e. embassy.

There are about 12 million Ismailis, including about 90,000 in Canada. They are a cohesive unit — prudent, modest and obedient to him (in sharp contrast to most Muslims who revel in their bombast and democratic chaos). The Ismailis are one of the most successful examples of integration into Canada, in no small measure due to the Aga Khan, who guides them both spiritually and in worldly matters.

Haroon Siddiqui’s column appears on Thursday and Sunday.

hsiddiqui@thestar.ca
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.geo.tv/article-159388-North- ... in-Toronto

North America´s first Islamic art museum to open in Toronto

Posted: September 11, 2014 - 452 PKT

TORONTO: A shiny new Islamic art museum and cultural center will open in Toronto next week, becoming the first of its kind in North America.

Bankrolled by Prince Karim Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims, the facility will feature more than 1,000 artifacts -- including rare scriptures of the Quran from the 7th and 8th centuries.

There are fine collections of Islamic art in museums throughout Canada and the United States, but this will be the first devoted entirely to such works when it welcomes visitors as of September 18.

The Can$300 million (US$274 million) Aga Khan Museum and adjacent Ismaili Center are sprawled over 6.8 hectares (17 acres), hoping to cater to Muslims and others

AFP |
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles ... nada/35472

Thursday 11 Sep 2014

Aga Khan’s gift to Canada

Riches of Islamic art and science to be unveiled in Toronto’s new cultural complex


By Julia Halperin. Museums, Issue 260, September 2014

Published online: 10 September 2014

Eight years in the making, the 113,000 sq. ft Aga Khan Museum seeks to increase knowledge and understanding of Muslim civilisations through the arts of the Islamic world

The first museum in North America devoted to Islamic arts and culture is due to open on 18 September in an unlikely place: the Don Mills suburb of Toronto, Canada. The Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslim community, philanthropist and chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network, is the founder of the C$300m ($275m) complex, which also includes a community centre and gardens covering 753,473 sq. ft.

Eight years in the making, the 113,000 sq. ft Aga Khan Museum seeks to increase knowledge and understanding of Muslim civilisations through the arts of the Islamic world. The more than 1,000-strong collection, which includes illuminated manuscripts, ceramics, textiles, paintings, scientific texts and musical instruments, spans 11 centuries and is drawn from the personal holdings of the Aga Khan and his family.

Cultural diplomacy

In keeping with the Aga Khan’s role as an international ambassador for Islam, the museum is as much an exercise in cultural diplomacy as an educational and scholarly endeavour. Objects underscore the Islamic world’s oft-overlooked history of cultural exchange. A brass astrolabe from 14th-century Spain, for example, contains inscriptions in Arabic, Hebrew and Latin, demonstrating how Christian, Muslim and Jewish astronomers used the instrument at different times.

The museum is also developing an exhibition about the Belitung shipwreck, the oldest Arab ship found in Asian waters. Regarded as one of the most significant archaeological finds of the 20th century, the ninth-century ship’s cargo included silver ingots, bronze vessels and 60,000 glazed ceramics. “We want to be able to highlight the fact that even in early times, there were constant trade relations between the Muslim world and the outside world,” says Henry Kim, the museum’s director.

The museum’s architecture refers to this cross-cultural influence. The Aga Khan asked the Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki to base his design on the concept of light, a central premise of Islamic architecture. The result is a luminous white limestone building that blends Japanese and Islamic traditions. Intricate window designs refer to mashrabiya (Islamic latticework) and Japanese bronze lanterns.

The Aga Khan decided to build the museum in Toronto after an unsuccessful bid in 2002 for a site in central London on the Thames. He has a strong relationship with Canada, which is home to around 100,000 Ismaili Muslims, funding other major projects there. A friend of the late Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau, the Aga Khan has called the country “the most successful pluralist society on the face of our globe”.

Broader agenda

The museum is just one part of the Aga Khan’s broader cultural agenda. He sponsors a triennial award for architecture and a joint programme for the study of Islamic art and architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also finances the conservation of endangered Muslim sites around the world, most recently in Syria, while he has funnelled millions of euros into the restoration of the Château de Chantilly, a historic French castle owned by the Institut de France, which is near his own Aiglemont estate.

Despite the Aga Khan’s deep pockets—in 2008 Forbes estimated that his personal wealth exceeded $1bn—the museum hopes to become financially self-sufficient within five years, Kim says. A combination of donations, sponsorships, memberships and ticket sales are expected to fund its estimated annual operating budget of around C$15m ($13.8m) along with further acquisitions.

The museum also intends to collect contemporary Islamic art. One inaugural exhibition, “The Garden of Ideas: Contemporary Art from Pakistan” (20 September-18 January 2015), presents new work by six artists. Imran Qureshi, who recently painted the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is due to create a site-specific work in the museum’s gardens.

Musicians due to perform in the first year include Wu Man, the award-winning player of the ancient Chinese instrument the pipa. “Everyone learns about Western art and the arts of China and Japan,” Kim says. “We are trying to show what happens between East and West. What lies between is Islamic art.”
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://globalnews.ca/news/1555084/watch ... an-museum/

September 10, 2014 9:23 am

WATCH: Inside look at Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum

By Staff Global News

WATCH ABOVE: The Aga Khan Museum lets Global News take an advance tour before opening later in the month

TORONTO – The Aga Khan Museum is one of a kind in North America and Global News has your first look inside the walls of Toronto’s newest attraction.

The museum is dedicated to Islamic art but it also holds an Ismaili centre for reflection, spirituality, and engagement.

“When the question of where to set up the museum came about, I think Toronto was identified as a place where the ideas of the museum would resonate the best,” said Aga Khan Museum Director & CEO Henry Kim.

It has taken four years since ground was broken for the museum to be ready to host Toronto with the doors now officially opening Sept. 18.

“This is a museum of the art of the Muslim world. But what it’s here for is to show people the connections across time and across cultures,” said Kim.

Designed by architect Fumihiko Maki, the entire building is considered a work of art which plays with shadows and natural light throughout the day.

The museum that bears his name is an initiative of His Highness the Aga Khan — spiritual leader to the world’s Ismaili Muslim community.

“His highness takes a very passionate interest in architecture. So this building is part of the excellence in architecture. He’s been involved in it for the last 50 years,” said Amirali Alibhai, head of performing arts at the Aga Khan Museum.

With a files from Zaffrin Pira

© Shaw Media, 2014
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/aga ... -1.2002587

Aga Khan Museum of Islamic art to open Friday in Toronto

Aga Khan museum in Toronto

The Canadian Press
Published Thursday, September 11, 2014 2:28PM EDT

Last Updated Thursday, September 11, 2014 10:57PM EDT

TORONTO -- A $300-million showcase complex that includes the first North American museum devoted to Islamic art opens Friday, an initiative of the Aga Khan, spiritual leader of the world's Ismaili Muslims.

The complex, designed by some of the world's top architects, aims to foster knowledge and understanding among Muslims as well as between Islamic societies and other cultures.

Located on 6.8-hectares, the museum building with its open-air, glassed-in courtyard is linked via a landscaped park featuring five granite reflecting pools to a cultural religious centre dominated by a towering glass roof over its prayer hall.
Photos

Aga Khan Museum of Islamic art

Ruba Kana'an, head of education and scholarly programs, looks at some of the artifacts on display at the new Aga Khan museum in Toronto on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014. (Colin Perkel / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
Aga Khan Museum of Islamic art in Toronto

Some of the artifacts on display at the new Aga Khan museum in Toronto are pictured on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014. (Colin Perkel / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

"You can see that the play of light throughout the building has different nuances and just creates an incredible ambience," said Farid Damji, a volunteer with the Aga Khan Council for Canada.

The Aga Khan, the community's 49th hereditary imam, is also a wealthy philanthropist who, along with members of the faith, bankrolled the new complex.

Despite the close association with Ismailism -- part of the Shia branch of Islam -- the museum intends to reflect the diversity of cultural expressions within Islam, Damji said as workers put the final touches to the interior and exterior elements this week.

"It's not an Ismaili museum," he said.

"It's a museum of Islam and Muslim civilization, so it's really meant to display that diversity."

Designed by award-winning Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, the museum building has at its centre a "courtyard of light," with heated floor tiles to help snow drain, and a 350-seat auditorium.

The exhibition space itself contains more than one-thousand objects and pieces of art -- manuscripts, drawings, paintings, tapestries, metalwork, ceramics -- from the 8th to 19th centuries.

In the centre of one display area sits a 16th-century fountain made of marble and sandstone in geometric formations that would have been in the reception hall of a palatial residence in Cairo. Nearby, a large 12th century copper candlestick from eastern Iran fills a display case.

Ruba Kana'an, a historian of Islamic art and head of education at the museum, called the collection special.

"It's a significant collection of the art of Muslim societies from different parts of the world," Kana'an said. "It has a variety of masterpieces -- works that are unique in either their beauty or their historical significance."

Paris-based museologist Adrien Gardere designed the interior of the museum and the multimedia elements that are part of the permanent and temporary displays.

The pieces are not meant to be seen in isolation, he said in an interview, adding that the days of a single artifact floating in space in a beam of light are over.

"The world of artifacts is a world of connection and dialogue," Gardere said. "We're in a place where the artifacts dialogue in a transversal way."

The Ismaili Centre is part of a global network of such facilities, including one in Vancouver.

The latest addition to the network -- the handiwork of renowned Indian architect Charles Correa -- features a lounge, library, classrooms and administrative offices as well as the prayer centre with its glass roof and its Arabic-calligraphy reflective wood.

The Swiss-born Aga Khan, an honorary Canadian Citizen, is slated to be on hand for Friday's official opening of the complex.

About 100,000 Ismailis, part of an estimated 15-million strong community in 30 countries, live in Canada.

Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/aga ... z3D2a1nktD
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

Links as received:

1) Videographer Audra Brown takes a tour of the Aga Khan Museum, a new building in Toronto celebrating Islamic art and culture.

http://www.citynews.ca/2014/09/10/aga-k ... next-week/


2. Global News video :A sneak peak at the AGA Khan museum in Toronto -

http://ow.ly/Bj74O



3. NATIONAL POST: Toronto set to unveil first museum of Islamic culture in North America

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/09/09 ... h-america/



4. Toronto Star: Aga Khan Museum readies for visit of the man himself

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/vi ... mself.html



5. MACLEANS

http://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/the ... f-toronto/


Pictures taken at Sunrise & sunset


http://salimnensi.pixieset.com/sunrisew ... ighlights/

http://salimnensi.pixieset.com/sunsetswynforddrive



http://salimnensi.pixieset.com/sunrisew ... retoronto/
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

WEBCAST: Opening ceremonies of the Ismaili Centre Toronto and Aga Khan Museum

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and His Highness the Aga Khan will officially open the Ismaili Centre Toronto and Aga Khan Museum today. The ceremonies will begin at the Ismaili Centre and conclude at the Museum. In honour of this occasion, a live webcast of the ceremonies will be streamed here:


https://www.agakhanmuseum.org/about/inauguration

This webcast will take place on Friday, September 12, 2014 soon after 2:00 PM Toronto time (GMT-4).
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/nat ... e20591864/


New Aga Khan museum and Ismaili complex opens in Toronto

TORONTO — The Canadian Press

Published Friday, Sep. 12 2014, 7:35 PM EDT

Last updated Friday, Sep. 12 2014, 7:37 PM EDT

The first museum in North America devoted to Islamic art will help promote an understanding of a religion that is based on tolerance and pluralism, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday at the new landmark’s opening ceremony.

The Aga Khan — spiritual leader of the Ismaili community — joined Harper in Toronto to celebrate the opening of his namesake museum, the $300-million Aga Khan Museum and Ismaili Centre.
More Related to this Story

Potentially toxic mould shuts national science museum in Ottawa

Group decries possible use of executed Chinese prisoners in bodies display

Is Canada a nation of science geeks?

The first North American museum dedicated to Islamic art opens in Toronto this Friday, bankrolled in part by the Aga Khan, the Ismaili Muslim spiritual leader. An art historian says the building houses a number of masterpieces.


Building on faith: Inside Toronto’s new Aga Khan Museum, designed by the world’s leading architects

“We celebrate today, then, not only the harmonious meeting of green gardens and glass galleries, or of Italian marble and Canadian maple. We rejoice above all in the special spirit which fills this place and gives it its soul,” Harper said.

“For a very, very long time this priceless gift will bring joy to the eyes and jubilation to the hearts of countless visitors.”

The Aga Khan, an honorary Canadian citizen, thanked the prime minister and the Canadian government, saying the country has been a significant partner for the Ismaili community and the Aga Khan Development Network.

He said it was a joy to celebrate the spirit of friendship at a time when so much of the world’s attention is focused on a climate of belligerence.

“These spaces will be filled with sounds of enrichment, dialogue and warm human rapport, as Ismailis and non-Ismailis share their lives in a healthy, gregarious spirit,” he said.

Harper praised the spiritual leader’s role in “demystifying Islam...by stressing its social traditions of peace, of tolerance and of pluralism.”

On display in the museum will be more than 1,000 artifacts from the 8th through 19th centuries sourced from various countries.

Renowned architects from Japan and India designed the main buildings, while a Lebanese architect designed the landscaped park that links them on the 6.8-hectare site. All three were present at Friday’s opening ceremony.

Federal and provincial political leaders, including Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, were also present.

The museum, which opens to the public Sept. 18, joins a network of Ismaili centres in Vancouver, London, Lisbon, Dubai and Dushanbe.

About 100,000 Ismailis, part of an estimated 15-million strong community in 30 countries, live in Canada.
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2014/09/12/pm- ... han-museum

Toronto, Ontario
12 September 2014

Introduction

Prime Minister Stephen Harper today joined His Highness the Aga Khan in the official opening of the Ismaili Centre and the Aga Khan Museum, situated in the Don Mills area of Toronto, Ontario. He was joined by Shelly Glover, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages.

While at the Ismaili Centre, the Prime Minister toured the complex which incorporates spaces for social and cultural gatherings, intellectual engagement and reflection, as well as spiritual contemplation.

He then visited the Aga Khan Museum, which also held its inaugural ceremony on the same day. The Museum’s collection, which includes art and artefacts from the permanent collection of His Highness the Aga Khan and members of his family, is dedicated to presenting an overview of the artistic, intellectual and scientific contributions that Muslim civilizations have made to world heritage.

Across Canada, Canadian Ismailis joined together at mosques and gathering places to watch a livestream of the events with their communities.

Quick Facts

His Highness the Aga Khan is the 49th hereditary Imam (spiritual leader) of the world's 15 million Shia Ismaili Muslims.
There are more than 100,000 Shia Ismaili Muslims in Canada.
Since taking on his role as Imam in 1957, His Highness the Aga Khan has been deeply engaged in improving the quality of life of the most vulnerable populations, while emphasizing the need to uphold human dignity as well as respect for tolerance and pluralism.
The first Canadian Ismaili Centre was opened in Burnaby, British Columbia, in 1985.
There are currently six Ismaili Centres globally, including the Centre in Toronto. The network of Ismaili Centres reflects and illustrates, through design and function, the Ismaili community’s intellectual and spiritual understanding of Islam, its social conscience and its tolerant attitude.
His Highness the Aga Khan was formally granted honorary citizenship in May 2010 during an official visit to Canada. During that visit, Prime Minister Harper and His Highness took part in the Foundation Ceremony of the Ismaili Centre, Aga Khan Museum and Park.
The Museum is the first in North America dedicated exclusively to the arts and artefacts of the Islamic world.
On February 27, 2014, His Highness the Aga Khan became the first faith leader to address the Joint Session of Canada’s Parliament.
Our longstanding development partnership was evidenced this past May, as the Aga Khan attended Prime Minister Harper’s Saving Every Woman Every Child Summit, where His Highness made a keynote address.

Quotes

“It is once more an honour to welcome His Highness the Aga Khan to Canada. Our country has a deep and longstanding partnership with the Imamat, as evidenced by his decision to establish the Ismaili Centre and the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto. This partnership stems from our shared commitment to pluralism, civil society, human dignity, and peace and understanding.” – Prime Minister Stephen Harper

“I encourage Canadians from coast to coast to coast as well as international visitors to tour these architectural marvels. I am certain that the Centre and Museum will help to promote spirituality and deepen religious and cultural understanding and respect in Canada.” – Prime Minister Stephen Harper
-
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/vi ... useum.html

Saturday, September 13, 2014

12:47 AM EDT

the star.com Visual Arts


PM and Aga Khan open Ismaili Centre and the Aga Khan Museum
“Pluralistic spirit” shared by Canadians and Aga Khan goes back to 1972, when Canada welcomed a significant Ismaili refugee populations from Uganda as they were expelled by the ruling despot Idi Amin.

By: Murray Whyte Visual arts, Published on Fri Sep 12 2014

Prime Minister Stephen Harper stepped out of his limousine at the Ismaili Centre in Don Mills Friday afternoon and allowed himself a rare moment of unbuttoned candour.

“It’s a good day,” he said, smoothing his jacket as he greeted the Prince Karim Al Husseini Aga Khan IV, the spiritual leader of 15 million Ismaili Muslims worldwide and a force for benevolent change across the globe, with a familiarity reserved for an old friend.

The occasion for their meeting, the ceremonial opening of the Ismaili Centre and the Aga Khan Museum, two remarkable new buildings that occupy nearly seven hectares alongside the Don Valley Parkway here, was very official. But the two men have been recently getting to know each other better and better.

In February, the Aga Khan, who tends to his flock of Muslim followers from a home base north of Paris, was invited to address Canadian Parliament, the first-ever faith leader given the chance to do so.

On the same visit, Harper and the Aga Khan held an event at Massey Hall here, where the Prime Minister pledged ongoing support to the Aga Khan Development Network, one of the of the world’s largest development agencies aimed at bringing health services, education and cultural development to impoverished countries worldwide.

The opening of the Ismaili Centre and the museum, however, is the bricks-and-mortar embodiment of shared values.
The Aga Khan shakes hands with Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the opening Friday of the Ismaili Centre Toronto and the Aga Khan Museum.

Aaron Vincent Elkaim / THE CANADIAN PRESS



The Aga Khan shakes hands with Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the opening Friday of the Ismaili Centre Toronto and the Aga Khan Museum.

Speaking to a crowd that included dignitaries, the architects of both buildings, and members of the local Ismaili community Friday, Harper praised the Aga Khan for his efforts in “demystifying Islam, throughout the world, by stressing its social traditions of peace, tolerance and of pluralism. This is a vision of Islam of which all Canadians can be proud,” he said, “especially when a contrary and violent distortion of that vision so regularly dominates the news.”

Harper drew a line from George Etienne Cartier, one of the fathers of Canadian Confederation, who strenuously supported pluralism as a core value of the nascent nation, and the priorities of the Ismaili community today. “The wisdom of acceptance and tolerance are lessons the Canadian Ismaili community teaches still,” he said. “In so doing, you have contributed to these fundamental values at the heart of our national identity.”

The Aga Khan followed Harper to the podium with characteristic humility. “Prime Minister Harper, words fail me — and that’s not often the case,” he said, to a ripple of laughter. “Canada has become a significant new homeland for our community,” he said.

The Ismaili Centre and Aga Khan Museum, he said, will “be filled with the sounds of enrichment, dialogue and warm human rapport as Ismailis and non-Ismailis share their lives in a healthy, gregarious spirit.”

Pluralism is a core value of the Aga Khan Development Network, and Canada has been a long-standing ally. In 1972, Canada welcomed a significant Ismaili refugee population from Uganda as they were expelled by the ruling despot Idi Amin, and the connection has grown stronger ever since.

When former prime minister Pierre Trudeau died in 2000, the Aga Khan was among his pallbearers. At the inauguration in Toronto Friday, Justin Trudeau, the Liberal leader and prime minister’s son, was there to greet the Aga Khan as a family friend. And, in 2010, when the Wynford Dr. site was announced as the new home of the Aga Khan-funded complex, Harper granted his highness Canadian citizenship.

Concluding his remarks, the Aga Khan reflected on the close relationship that has evolved as a simple, natural thing.

“The complex we inaugurate today is animated by a truly pluralistic spirit,” he said. “In this respect, too, it reflects the deep-set Ismaili values and pluralistic commitments that are so deeply embedded in Canadian values.”
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/s ... -1.2764535

CBC Toronto

© The Canadian Press, 2014

Stephen Harper on hand for Aga Khan museum opening
$300 million museum is the first in North America devoted to Islamic art


The Canadian Press Posted: Sep 12, 2014 12:17 PM ET Last Updated: Sep 12, 2014 4:29 PM ET

The first museum in North America devoted to Islamic art will help promote an understanding of a religion that is based on tolerance and pluralism, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday at the new landmark's opening ceremony.

The Aga Khan — spiritual leader of the world's Ismaili community — joined Harper in Toronto to celebrate the opening of his namesake museum, the $300-million Aga Khan museum and Ismaili centre.

"We celebrate today, then, not only the harmonious meeting of green gardens and glass galleries, or of Italian marble and Canadian maple. We rejoice above all in the special spirit which fills this place and gives it its soul, " Harper said.

The Aga Khan Museum opens to the public on September 18th. It has been funded by the Aga Khan Development Network, a worldwide agency overseen by the Aga Khan.

1 of 9

"For a very, very long time this priceless gift will bring joy to the eyes and jubilation to the hearts of countless visitors."

On display will be more than 1,000 artifacts from the 8th through 19th centuries sourced from various countries.

Renowned architects from Japan and India designed the main buildings, while a Lebanese architect designed the landscaped park that links them on the 6.8-hectare site.

The project aims to foster knowledge and understanding within Muslim societies and between these societies and other cultures.

"The decision to establish this significant initiative in Canada reflects the deep and longstanding partnership between the Imamat and Canada," Harper said.

"This partnership stems from our shared commitment to pluralism, to civil society, human dignity, peace and understanding."

The museum opens to the public on Sept. 18.
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.insidetoronto.com/news-story ... ally-open/


Aga Khan Museum now officially open
Prime Minister Stephen Harper: ‘This is a vision of Islam in which all Canadians can be proud of’


Staff photo/DAN PEARCE

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Aga Khan, with the Aga Khan Museum in behind, at the official opening of the facility Friday, Sept. 12.

North York Mirror
By Clark Kim


Prime Minister Stephen Harper attended the inauguration of the Ismaili Centre and Aga Khan Museum on Friday, Sept. 12, officially opening the $300 million museum complex.

“We celebrate today, that ambitious promise is now a splendid reality,” said Harper, standing alongside His Highness the Aga Khan again as he did four years ago during the foundational ceremony.

Harper expressed his gratitude to the Aga Khan for tirelessly promoting the ideals of Islam culture and civilization, social diversity, and helping demystify Islam to the rest of the world.

“This is a vision of Islam in which all Canadians can be proud of,” said Harper at the inaugural event with such notable dignitaries in attendance including former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson.

The Aga Khan Museum and Ismaili Centre, which is located on 6.8 hectares of land at 77 Wynford Dr. near Don Mills Road and Eglinton Avenue, will be opened to the public next week on Thursday, Sept. 18.

The museum’s permanent collection features more than 1,000 objects that include portraits, textiles, manuscripts, and musical instruments, which showcase Islamic art, culture and history.

The Aga Khan returned the compliments, acknowledging the Canadian government, donors, architects, designers and the local neighbourhood for their support.

“Here we are today, a story over 18 years has been one of deeply shared purpose,” said the Aga Khan, noting the planning of the complex began nearly two decades ago.

The Ismaili Centre in Toronto joins a network of other centres located around the world including London, Lisbon, Dubai, Dushanbe and Vancouver.

The Aga Khan added that he hoped the park space connecting the Ismaili Centre and the Aga Khan Museum will be used by people of all ages and backgrounds for relaxation and contemplation.

“We are a community that welcomes the smile,” he said.

For more information about the Aga Khan Museum, visit www.agakhanmuseum.org
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

AS RECEIVED

From: Sat, Sep 13, 2014 at 6:53 PM
Subject: CBC Radio Interview on the importance of the Aga Khan and Aga Khan
Museum with Khalil
*From:* Khalil Andani

Ya Ali Madad Friends,

Many mubarakis to all of you on the occasion of Mawlana Hazar Imam's visit
to Toronto.

Last night I was interviewed on CBC Radio's *Here and How* and asked to
speak about the importance of Hazar Imam and the opening of the Aga Khan
Museum.

You can listen to the recording of the 5 minute interview here:
http://bit.ly/khalil_radio1

--
Khalil Andani, CA-CPA
Doctor of Philosophy Candidate - Islamic Studies
Harvard University
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/09 ... _hume.html

Aga Khan Museum a needed dose of civic ambition for Toronto: Hume

The Aga Khan’s project, including the Ismaili Centre, is a rare Toronto building that aspires to both importance and permanence, writes Christopher Hume.


By: Christopher Hume Urban Issues, Published on Mon Sep 15 2014

Above all, the Ismaili Centre and Aga Khan Museum are an act of faith, not just in religion but in Toronto. Of all the cities where these facilities, especially the museum, could have been located, the Ismailis chose this one.

Not only did they construct their monuments in a forlorn site at Eglinton and Wynford Dr., they hired two of the finest architects in the world — Fumihiko Maki of Japan and Charles Correa from India — to design them.

Not only did the Ismailis see the possibility of beauty where no one here had noticed, they put their money — $300 million and a priceless collection — where their mouth is.

On top of that, they placed the complex within a fully formed landscape of exquisite reflecting pools and mature trees.

The Ismaili ideals of pluralism and inclusion are built into the very architecture and layout of the place.

It will take time for the city to come to grips with the magnitude of such a gift; Wynford Dr. isn’t exactly at the heart of things, but neither is it the middle of nowhere, though it looks like it.
The entrance to the Aga Khan Museum, as seen in Toronto on Tuesday, Sept. 9.

Colin Perkel / THE CANADIAN PRESS

The entrance to the Aga Khan Museum, as seen in Toronto on Tuesday, Sept. 9.

“It’s a very formless part of the city,” Correa said at the Ismaili Centre, “like the bottom of the sea or something. I don’t know why Toronto abandoned the scale of neighbourhoods like Yorkville.”

On the other hand, the complex sits on a high point overlooking the Don Valley Parkway and is a landmark. Its dome-like structure, all glass, limestone and angularity, won’t be ignored. The Aga Khan, Correa explained, “was very keen that the buildings be seen.”

His Highness — HH in his absence — needn’t have worried. The architect rightly calls it a “come-on.”

But it’s also a come-in. Indeed, what makes this project so different, even revolutionary in this context, is the assumption that the quality of space matters. This means everything from light and dark to paving and planting. The attention to small details as well as big moves stands out in a sprawling suburban environment where most buildings are unadorned slabs in an ocean of parking lots.

The car is every bit as crucial to the centre — at least until the Eglinton Crosstown line opens — but it has been kept at a distance. Even so, the entrance from the underground garage to the museum includes a remarkable sound and slide show based on artifacts displayed in the rooms above.

In an area whose physical form is determined by exclusionary zoning and a belief that land is expendable and its uses only temporary, the arrival of something that aspires to permanence, let alone excellence, feels provocative. Suddenly, a vast swath of Toronto has been subtly revealed in all its banality.

But change has to start somewhere and perhaps this will be it. The new complex doesn’t confront so much as it quietly raises the stakes. It brings cultural, social and economic value to a place where there was little or none. And all this without resorting to preciousness.

For Toronto, which some would turn into a backwoods family fiefdom, it’s a reminder that turning ever more inward is not an option. The rest of the world wants in, we want out.

In addition to everything else, the Ismailis have brought leadership to the city. You don’t have to be a believer to see the results. They have put Wynford Drive on the map and made it a global centre of Islamic art, which we could not have managed on our own.

“I’m a little jealous it’s not in my city,” said visiting Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi. He should be.
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3035622/wan ... amic-art#6

September 15, 2014 | 8:00 AM

A Look Inside Fumihiko Maki's Gorgeous New Museum For Islamic Art

The Aga Khan, designed by Fumihiko Maki, is North America’s first museum dedicated to Islamic art.



New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art made headlines in 2011 when it reopened its Islamic art galleries after years of renovation. Amid ongoing American involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, the 19,000 square-foot wing, complete with a Maghrebi-Andalusian-style courtyard built from scratch by Moroccan artisans, struck a chord with visitors curious to see another side of Islamic culture.

Now, a new museum set to open in Toronto next week, with more than double the Met's gallery space, is poised to establish North America's first dedicated home for Islamic art.

Pritzker Prize-winner Fumihiko Maki designed the 47,000 square-foot Aga Khan Museum, its smooth granite facade topped with crenels that evoke a battlement. Inside the fortress-like walls, patterned glass skylights and floor tiles echo Islam’s famous mosaics. Maki, whose past projects include 4 World Trade Center and the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, Japan, is known as “a modernist who has fused the best of both eastern and western cultures,” according to the Pritzker jury.

“Detailing is what gives architecture its rhythm and scale," Maki has been known to tell students and admirers.

The museum is the brainchild of billionaire Prince Shah Karim Al Huseeini, also known as His Highness the Aga Khan, who serves as the 49th hereditary Imam of Shia Islam’s second largest sect. Educated at Harvard and heir to a wide-ranging art collection, he began augmenting his family’s Islamic art holdings in the 1990s, with a focus on Indian miniature paintings, and decided to bring the resulting collection under one public-facing roof in 2003.
Ivory horn from southern Italy, 11th–12th centuries

Notable works in the Aga Khan collection include illuminated paintings from India and Iran, an 11th-century medical encyclopedia, and an ivory horn carved with mythical animals. The museum opens to the public on September 18.

[h/t the Wall Street Journal]
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/art ... e20614627/


Toronto's Aga Khan Museum, opening this week, is a world-class showcase for Islamic art

James Adams

The Globe and Mail

Published Tuesday, Sep. 16 2014, 10:49 AM EDT

Last updated Tuesday, Sep. 16 2014, 10:49 AM EDT

It’s said that a city – a city like Toronto, say – whose boosters often rely on the adjective “world-class” to describe both its overall grooviness and its particular charms can’t, in fact, be truly world-class. You’re either world-class or you’re not and no amount of huffing, puffing or tub-thumping is going to grant a burg that cachet. World-class, in short, is self-evident and unspoken.

Still, you can’t keep a person from thinking something’s world-class. Which is, in fact, what I was thinking one cool, overcast morning last week while touring the Aga Khan Museum with educational consultant Patricia Bentley. The museum, which opens Thursday (a ceremonial opening, featuring Prince Shah Karim Al Hussaini Aga Khan, was held Sept. 12), has been a long time coming, Toronto having been named its home 12 years ago this October by the prince, spiritual head of the planet’s 15 million Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims.
The entrance to the Aga Khan museum in Toronto is seen on Sept. 9, part of a new $300-million complex located on a seven-hectare site near the Don Valley Parkway. (Colin Perkel/The Canadian Press)

Yet for all the waiting, the museum seems destined to become both major cultural destination and player in very short order. In fact, doesn’t its completion atop its seven-hectare site on the brow of the Don Valley Parkway seem almost … sudden? Perhaps this is because the 10,100-square-metre museum, with its elegant gardens, five reflecting pools and adjacent Ismaili Community Centre and mosque, seems to have unfolded in very slow motion, quietly, without hype, with the sort of discretion only a $300-million-plus budget can buy. Forty-odd years ago the British rock group Yes sang about how “mountains come out of the sky/And they stand there.” There’s something of that quality to the two graceful monoliths plunked serenely near the incessant riverrun of traffic up and down the Parkway.

The world, of course, has many museums and galleries with space devoted to Islamic art. Toronto’s own Royal Ontario Museum, for example, has a curator of Islamic decorative art and its Wirth Gallery of the Middle East contains Islamic artifacts. But the Aga Khan Museum is being touted as the only institution in North America dedicated solely to the panoply of Islamic art – painted illustrations, ceramics, weavings, calligraphy, scientific instruments, paintings, clothing, myriad editions of the Koran.

The permanent collection, which until now has been housed in Paris, London and Geneva, numbers more than 1,000 artifacts, of which about 250 will be shown at any one time in Toronto as part of a policy of “quite frequent rotation,” Bentley said. It’s not an especially old collection. Although the pieces span roughly the seventh to the late 19th centuries, most have been acquired only in the past 60 years. Unsurprisingly then, the collection is testament to connoisseurship and curatorial savvy.
There are varying suggestions as to where this Quran may have been produced. Although an Il-Khanid Persia or Mamluk Egypt origin cannot be discounted, this Quran has certain features that suggest a different place: Yemen, during the period of Rasulid rule (1229-1454 CE). (Aga Khan Museum)

Artifacts are displayed on two floors, in large, high-ceilinged, discreetly lit white rooms with teak floors. The main-floor space prefaced by a corridor illuminated by an arresting series of video animations, has its treasures arranged chronologically on an L-shaped footprint, and is decidedly Catholic in its presentation. There are three large vitrines displaying Korans of varying degrees of calligraphic magnificence; a 10th-century inkwell carved from rock crystal; a marble fountain, with geometric mosaics, from a palatial courtyard in 15th-century Egypt; a tunic of beige brocaded silk worn by a horseman in 14th-century Iran; the oldest-known extant version of The Canon of Medicine, compiled in Persia in the 11th century; a bronze astrolabe with silver insets from 14th-century Spain, its surface inscribed in Arabic, Hebrew and Latin.

Bentley noted that to many Westerners, Islam is a stern theocratic monolith when, in reality, it’s been a multiplicity of dynasties and civilizations encompassing more than 1,000 years, its reach extending far beyond the Arabian Peninsula to Spain, Africa, Indonesia, the Indian subcontinent and the gates of China. “Our biggest message here really is diversity,” Bentley said, “and how Islam has always responded to local traditions.” Moreover, it’s “not true there is a prohibition against figurative images in Islamic art,” she said. Yes, there is no figuration in the Koran nor images in mosques but, as the Aga Khan Museum shows, figural motifs – human, animal, fanstastical (including dragons and harpies) – were a staple of Islamic artistic expression.

One of the finest examples of this is found in the museum’s second-floor gallery. It’s an illuminated folio called The Court of Keyomars, attributed to the 16th-century Iranian artist Soltan Mohammad, painted on paper in opaque watercolour, gold, silver and ink for Shah Tahmasp I. Astonishingly detailed, exquisitely executed (some of its strokes were reportedly made by a single squirrel hair), luminously lyrical, the scene depicts a seemingly levitating mythical king and his turbaned courtiers blissed out in a paradise of riotously coloured vegetation, rocks and water. Said Bentley: “It’s considered by many scholars to be the greatest masterpiece of Persian and Moghul painting.” The folio is one of dozens of works in In Search of the Artist, a themed show, culled from the Aga Khan’s permanent collection, highlighting recognized Iranian and Indian painters and drawers from the 16th through 18th centuries, artists largely unknown to Western eyes yet as hefty in their fashion as a Bruegel or Bellini. Included is an early 17th-century Moghul Indian painting, Son’s Lamentation at His Father’s Funeral, one of the few artifacts by a female artist, Sahifa Banu.
The Court of Keyomars is attributed to the 16th-century Iranian artist Soltan Mohammad. (Aga Khan Museum)

Another temporary exhibition, The Garden of Ideas, features work – in printmaking, video, rug-making and miniature painting, among other idioms – of six contemporary Pakistani artists. Assembled by the Sri Lankan curator Sharmini Pereira, the show’s a clear signal that the Aga Khan is not going to be just historical in focus, that Islamic art has both a present and a future. It’s also a riposte of sorts to the commonly held conception of Pakistan as “the most dangerous place in the world” where the only growth industry is jihadism.

The most famous of the six Pakistanis is Imran Qureshi, the Lahore-based miniature painter and teacher. Not only does Qureshi, 42, have nine gouaches on handmade paper hanging in The Garden of Ideas, he got the okay to paint, in acrylic and latex, a large site-specific work on the museum grounds. Titled The Garden Within, its roiling, predominantly green landscape of vegetal forms on cement recalls the huge, red-splattered installation Qureshi did last year on the rooftop garden of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. To these eyes, though, the most eye-popping contemporary work is found inside the museum, just outside the entrance to the main-floor gallery. Part tapestry, part sculpture, Your Way Begins on the Other Side by Aisha Khalid, another 42-year-old Lahorean, hangs more than six metres; one side, with its rich patterns and images of lions, leopards, dragons and deer, riffs on the Safavid carpets of 16th-century Persia, the other is a “lawn” made up of more than a million densely packed, brightly coloured metal pins.
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign ... ew-toronto

Aga Khan Museum: North America finally gets a home for Islamic art

A billionaire playboy and two of the world’s most celebrated architects have created a cosmic space for a spectacular hoard of Islamic art – in deepest suburban Toronto.

Oliver Wainwright
The Guardian, Tuesday 16 September 2014 18.21 BST



There were lustrous ceramics, shimmering skeins of silk, finely carved ivory, illuminated texts and all the latest medical instruments. Lavishly paraded through the streets of 10th-century Cairo, the Fatimid caliphs used the public display of royal bounty to help cement their new capital as the most important cultural centre of the Islamic world. Masters of stagecraft and the symbolic power of art, they developed a culture of exhibiting private treasures in public long before museums began in the west. Now, 1,000 years later, one of their descendants is continuing the tradition – in a business park on the edge of Toronto.

With faceted white walls that gleam in the afternoon sun and strange crystalline domes poking up above the trees, the new $300m (£168m) Aga Khan Museum and Ismaili Centre are startling additions to this stretch of suburban North America, at the roaring junction of two six-lane expressways. The museum is a monolithic shed, its canted walls giving it the look of a gigantic packing box that has been flipped open, with sharply chiselled skylights sliced into its crisp limestone skin. Across a vast pond-studded courtyard, the Ismaili Centre is a cluster of low-slung sandstone buildings, from which emerges a translucent pyramidal roof, ramping up at an angle as if pointing towards the stars. Together, they form an enigmatic complex that has the look of a cosmic observatory, or some mysterious lunar fortress. Like Hugh Casson’s Ismaili Centre in South Kensington, they are at once timeless and futuristic, somewhat unearthly and, like their Fatimid predecessors, have a heavily fortified air.

The project is a particularly unusual arrival to Toronto’s Don Valley, a green “edgeland” north-east of the city, for being the work of two of Asia’s greatest living architects. The 86-year-old Japanese Pritzker winner, Fumihiko Maki, was responsible for the museum, while the Ismaili Centre was designed by the 84-year-old titan of Indian modernism, Charles Correa. Their patron is equally esteemed: the Aga Khan, Prince Shah Karim Al Husseini (or “K” to his friends), is the 49th hereditary imam of the estimated 15 million Nizari Ismaili Muslims – a branch of Islam that reached its peak during the Fatimid empire – whose followers believe him to be a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad. Among the beer stores and office parks, something sacred has landed.
Ismaili Centre toronto Charles Correa A place for reflection: the Ismaili Centre in Toronto, designed by Charles Correa. Photograph: Ismaili Centre

Arriving at the site with Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, flanked by substantial security, the 77-year-old Aga Khan looks more businessman than spiritual leader. He has swapped his ancestors’ Cairene courts for a chateau in France and the regal retinue for a playboy lifestyle of thoroughbred race horses, luxury yachts, private jets and beautiful women. A Swiss-educated British business magnate, he has amassed an estimated fortune of roughly £8bn, making him one of the richest royals in the world – he’s also one of the most philanthropic. The business empire of his Fund for Economic Development, ranging from airlines and hotels to food and telecoms, generates revenues of £1.4bn annually, the profits of which are ploughed back into the Aga Khan Development Network, which employs 80,000 people working to improve health, education and economic development across sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Middle East. “We have no notion of the accumulation of wealth being evil,” he said in a rare recent interview, commenting on the 10% tithes that all Ismailis pay him. “It’s how you use it.”

Almost 20 years in the making, the Toronto site is the work of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture which, like a mini Unesco, runs an impressive programme of historic conservation of Islamic architecture around the world and a respected triennial architecture award. The 10,000-square-metre building is the new home for the Aga Khan’s spectacular hoard of Islamic art, more than 1,000 artefacts spanning three continents over 10 centuries, and is the first museum in North America dedicated to the subject.

The project was originally planned for London, on a prime site opposite the Houses of Parliament and beside St Thomas’ hospital, but the land went to the NHS after a vitriolic campaign that ended with accusations of blackmail and skulduggery – and the princely imam taking his treasures elsewhere. Correa’s Ismaili Centre, meanwhile, had long been planned for the Toronto site, and the sale of an adjacent plot of land in 2002 provided an expedient solution to house the museum. Although it was not necessarily the wisest location, being a good 20-minute drive from downtown Toronto’s main cultural attractions.

The project’s piecemeal evolution is evident: designed almost a decade apart, the two buildings sit uncomfortably in each other’s presence. Facing off across the courtyard – which is scaled to the 100-metre-width of the Great Mosque of Isfahan – Maki’s museum attempts to set up an axial arrangement, with a grand double-height portal that comes complete with a flip-down canopy, giving it the look of an entrance to a spaceship. It is met, however, by the blank frontage of Correa’s circular prayer hall. To get in, you have to navigate up some steps and around the corner.
Aga Khan Museum Chiselled … the Aga Khan Museum’s limestone lines. Photograph: Tom Alban

Such ground-level niggles will matter little in Canada, where most visitors are expected to arrive by car and will be funnelled up from the 800-space underground car park. From here, the museum’s majestic triple-height atrium tracks around a glazed cubic courtyard and leads to a series of galleries, masterminded by Adrien Gardère, the Louvre Lens exhibition designer, as an airy stroll through the prolific output of the Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids and Mamluks. “We wanted to avoid the common jewellery box approach of having precious objects spotlit in the gloom, and the overcrowded feeling you find in many galleries,” says Gardère. There is a great luxury of space, but it all feels a bit empty, like an echoing airport terminal – complete with a VIP lounge upstairs.

The collection doesn’t come close to the vast Islamic holdings of the British Museum or the V&A, nor the Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, But as museum director, Henry Kim, fresh from leading the transformation of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, puts it: “It is a connoisseur’s collection. There may not be many pieces, but they are some of the best.”

They range from the earliest surviving manuscript of Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine, the text that kept ancient Greek thought alive while the west plunged into the dark ages, to a 14th-century Andalusian astrolabe, inscribed in Arabic, Latin and Hebrew, along with exquisite 16th-century paintings from the Persian Book of Kings. There are textiles and miniatures, tiles and musical instruments, and moralistic Iranian pottery from the 10th-century, including a plate with calligraphic script that reads: “Beware of the imbecile: do not socialise with him.” An adjoining restaurant provides the setting for such occasions, replete with fittings from a Damascus mosque, uncomfortably jammed into suspended ceilings in a way that feels more Starbucks than priceless museological collection.
Aga Khan Museum toronto terrace A sweeping terrace leads to the Aga Khan Museum

While Maki’s glacial museum speaks of institutional weight, Correa’s Ismaili Centre has a warmer municipal feel, its prayer hall and meeting rooms joined by what he calls “a fluid space that connects the religious, social, community functions, with no divide”, as well as a roof terrace that has, “a Mussolini balcony for His Highness to stand on”. It was intended to be built in rough-cast concrete, the material in which Correa works best, but wasn’t deemed sufficiently regal. The resulting beige stone, lined with Canadian maple and red carpets, feels a bit insipid.

So what are the sources for constructing an Ismaili architectural identity, for a diaspora with no nation to call their own? “There is no Ismaili architecture,” says Luis Monreal, art historian and director of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. “The history of Islamic architecture from the ninth century onwards has always been a process of copying and absorbing the local context, creating regional difference.” While the buildings here appear to riff on North American rural sheds (inflected with a cosmic touch), it will be interesting to see what emerges in central London. Although the Aga Khan’s UK ambitions might have been thwarted before, a cultural complex is being planned for King’s Cross, which will comprise a 9,000-square-metre Islamic cultural centre and a new home for the Aga Khan University – both designed by Maki – as well as a 200-bed student accommodation block. The details, says Monreal, are confidential. “But I can tell you it won’t be neo-Mamluk. Our architects are forbidden to go to the past.”
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/trave ... ealed.html


Toronto's Aga Khan Museum revealed

Toronto's newly open Aga Khan Museum of Islamic Art celebrates the cultural achievements of the Muslim world


Claire Wrathall
By Claire Wrathall
September 17, 2014 14:28



Among the exquisite exhibits that fill the Aga Khan Museum of Islamic Art, which opens in Toronto on 18 September, is a little Moghul portrait, just over a foot tall, entitled Shah Jahan, His Three Sons and Asaf Khan. It’s an enchanting image by any standard, the five figures, each seen in profile, stand, or in Shah Jahan’s case sit, on a carpet woven with flowers, against a ground of greenery and vivid blue sky patterned with clouds. They are lavishly bejewelled and diaphanously clad. Though it was painted in watercolour and ink, its colours remain bright, as does the gold with which it is embellished. What gives it a special emotional weight, however, is that Shah Jahan was, of course, the emperor who built the Taj Mahal, the peerless “teardrop on the face of eternity” as the great Bengali poet and artist Rabindranath Tagore called it, as a mausoleum in memory of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal. The standing figure, Asaf Kahn, is her father. The sons are three of her 14 children.

Mumtaz Mahal died in 1631, three years after the painting was made, or rather after her relatives’ faces were painted. It turns out the picture was made rather earlier, for it is signed by the artist Manohar, who ceased to be active in 1624. As the caption explains “In their quest to legitimise their rule, Moghul emperors saw no harm in taking over pre-existing works of art, as if to place themselves in a more glorious historical past. In this case, new faces with physical features attributed to Shah Jahan […] replace those of Emperor Jahangir, the original patron, and his sons.”

It’s precisely this sort of detail that makes the exhibits here, all drawn from the Aga Khan and his family’s private collection so fascinating. Drawn, in its curators’ words, “from every region and every period, and created from every kind of material in the Muslim world,” the exhibits embrace paintings, textiles, costumes, manuscripts, ceramics, medical texts, books, tiles and musical instruments and stretch geographically from China (where porcelain and silk were manufactured both for local Muslim communities and for export to, for instance, Persia) to Spain (through a rare intricately decorated 14th-century brass astrolabe inscribed in Arabic, Hebrew and Latin and probably made in Toledo).

In contrast the building, designed by the octogenarian Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, is an unshowy though geometrically complex, essentially rectilinear structure of pale polished Brazilian granite with a glass-enclosed courtyard at its heart, its windows etched with a pattern of stars to evoke those found on moucharabieh screens.

The museum sits within a 17-acre park, part of which is modelled on a traditional Islamic char bagh, or paradise garden, a formal arrangement of four quadrants and five reflecting pools, along with the Charles Correa-designed Ismaili Centre, a community centre and prayer hall for Ismaili Muslims, for whom the Aga Khan is their spiritual leader.

Given the success of the Islamic Galleries that opened at the Metropolitan Museum at the end of 2011, which attracted more than a million visitors in little over a year, it’s extraordinary that there hasn’t until now been a museum dedicated to Islamic art anywhere in North America. But just as the peerless Museum of Islamic Art in Doha has played a significant role in positioning the Qatari capital as a tourist destination, so this museum provides a compelling reason to visit Toronto.

Opening hours: 10am-6pm Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday to Sunday; 10am-8pm Thursday
Admission costs: CN$20 (about £11); concessions CN$15 (about £8)
Aga Khan Museum
77 Wynford Dr
Toronto
ON M3C
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.religionnews.com/2014/09/16/ ... milestone/

For Ismaili Muslims, a Toronto milestone
Ron Csillag | September 16, 2014 |

TORONTO (RNS) Two new Muslim attractions opening soon should help dispel negative stereotypes of Islam, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said.

The country’s first museum of Islamic art is scheduled to open Thursday (Sept. 1 8) in the heart of Canada’s largest city, Toronto. An adjacent Ismaili center is expected to follow. Harper and the Aga Khan, spiritual leader of the world’s 15 million Ismaili Muslims, attended a ceremony last week inaugurating the $300 million complex, which sits on 17 acres of lush gardens and parkland.

The Aga Khan Museum will house some 1,000 artifacts spanning a millennium of Islamic history. The adjacent Ismaili Centre, Toronto, will include a prayer space and rooms for social, educational and cultural events.

“The center creates an understanding of the values, ethics, culture and heritage of Ismaili Muslims,” a statement from Canada’s 90,000-strong Ismaili community said.

Ismailis are an offshoot of Shiite Islam. They are spread across 25 countries but united in their allegiance to Prince Karim Aga Khan.

In opening the museum, Harper praised the Aga Khan, who “has greatly contributed to demystifying Islam, throughout the world, by stressing its social traditions of peace, of tolerance and of pluralism.”

In his remarks, the Aga Khan, the 49th hereditary imam (spiritual leader) of Ismaili Muslims, lauded Canada for having accepted thousands of Ismailis who fled persecution in Africa and Asia.

When the Aga Khan set out more than a decade ago to build a landmark museum to house his family’s collection of Islamic art, he wanted to locate it in London. When those plans fell through, he chose Toronto because of the city’s large Ismaili population and his strong ties to Canada.

The connection grew stronger, and in 2010, the Aga Khan was named an honorary Canadian citizen, one of just six people on whom the honor has been bestowed.

The Ismaili Centre, Toronto, which is winning kudos for its modernist architecture, is the sixth in a network of such facilities in Vancouver, Canada; London; Lisbon, Portugal; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan.

YS/MG END CSILLAG
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

The Aga Khan’s $300m treasure palace unveiled

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/article4209475.ece

Tom Charity

Published at 12:01AM, September 18 2014

Opening today, the Toronto museum is on a mission to challenge North American misconceptions about Islam and Islamic art

“When you think of the history of art, how many artists from the Muslim world can you name?” challenges Henry Kim, director and CEO of the new Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, confident that the answer will most likely be none. He offers the same challenge for contemporary Muslim artists, allowing that art aficionados should be able to come up with a handful — which is nothing to be proud of. Indeed, given the destructive and prohibitive excesses of some reactionaries in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali and other places, it’s tempting to assume there is something antithetical about the concepts of Islam
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/mu ... world.html

Aga Khan Museum welcomes music of the world
Toronto musician David Buchbinder has assembled a wide range of musicians to inaugurate the music programming at Aga Khan centre, with a mission of fostering tolerance.

“We have so many musicians studying in different traditions," says David Buchbinder, artistic director of the Routes of Andalusia ensemble, performing Saturday at the Aga Khan Museum.
By: Trish Crawford Music, Published on Wed Sep 17 2014

Toronto’s new museum of Islamic culture opens its music program Saturday with a roster of performers representing many of the religions and cultures found in Toronto.

The inaugural concert at the Aga Khan Museum is led by a Jewish musician, though David Buchbinder sees nothing unusual about that.

“It’s noteworthy in that it is not important at all,” says the trumpeter and artistic director of the multidisciplinary concert. “It shows they are dedicated to diversity not as a catchphrase but in practice.”

The centre’s mission is to promote mutual understanding and tolerance.

Buchbinder, whose spouse, Roula Said, is of Canadian/Palestinian heritage and will be singing during the event, says Toronto has a wealth of performers knowledgeable about many cultures’ music and history.

“We have so many musicians studying in different traditions.”

Among the string and percussion instruments will be the oud (Arabic lute) and tres (Cuban guitar that evolved from the lute) as well as the modern violin and cello. Mor Karbasi, who was born in Jerusalem, sings Jewish Ladino, or Sephardic, songs while Said sings Arabic and Roma music.

The 10-member ensemble will be joined by flamenco dancer Esmeralda Enrique in the performance in the 380-seat auditorium.

The program, titled “Routes of Andalusia,” is inspired by the musical traditions that sprang from southern Spain as well as Morocco, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Greece, Cuba and the north coast of Colombia. New compositions by Buchbinder and Cuban-Canadian pianist Hilario Duran will be complemented by traditional world music.

Buchbinder says he came to the attention of the people involved with the Aga Khan Museum following a cross-cultural performance at Koerner Hall in 2012 in which he explored the influences of Andalusia. Since then his continued research into the confluence of cultures has resulted in the CD Odessa/Havana, which won a Juno Award earlier this year for best world music album.

This is the result of 25 years of exploration and study by the musician who is fascinated by Andalusia’s “incredibly diverse culture.” While Europe was in the Dark Ages, Andalusia’s arts, science, philosophy and fashion flourished, he says.

“Every single culture that has made significant cultural contributions had the advantage of diversity,” he says.

The spirit of inclusion was reflected in a private event at the museum last weekend in which Buchbinder and renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma worked with young musicians in city youth programs. On Saturday the professionals heard the students play and then, on Sunday, Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble performed exclusively for the students after playing the night before at a gala.

“Music brings beauty into every day life,” says Buchbinder, of the reason for outreach programs. “It brings refinement of life”.

Tickets for Saturday’s 8 p.m. concert are $45, $65 and $75 or passes starting at $110 are available at agakhanmuseum.org for two-day attendance at the museum during which numerous musicians will be entertaining as part of a festival celebrating the centre’s opening to the public.
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/aga-kh ... sCatID=385



Sub Categories: » HOMEPAGE / ARTS-CULTURE/ ARTS

Thursday,September 18 2014, Your time is 11:33:20 AM

Aga Khan Museum brings artistic riches to Toronto

TORONTO
Canada’s largest city is welcoming a new museum showcasing the splendor of Islamic art and culture. The Aga Khan Museum will feature everything from rare Quranic manuscripts to musical instruments


[Aga Khan Museum brings artistic riches to Toronto]

The Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, which is dedicated to presenting an overview of the artistic, intellectual and scientific contributions that Muslim civilizations have made to world heritage, is opening its doors to the public today, becoming the first of its kind in North America.

Bankrolled by Prince Karim Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims, the museum features rare scriptures of the Quran from the seventh and eighth centuries.

At a preview last week, a piece of carved marble from 10th-century Spain was among the works that sparked particular interest.

There are fine collections of Islamic art in museums throughout Canada and the United States, but this is the first devoted entirely to such works when it welcomes visitors.

HDN The museum’s permanent collection of over 1,000 objects includes masterpieces that reflect a broad range of artistic styles and materials. The portraits, textiles, miniatures, manuscripts, ceramics, tiles, medical texts, books and musical instruments represent more than 10 centuries of human history and a geographic area stretching from the Iberian Peninsula to China.

Designed by architect Fumihiko Maki, the museum shares a nearly 60,000-square-meter site with Toronto’s Ismaili Center, which was designed by architect Charles Correa. The surrounding landscaped park, designed by landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic, provides an exciting new green space for the city of Toronto.

“One of the lessons we have learned in recent years is that the world of Islam and the Western world need to work together much more effectively at building mutual understanding , especially as these cultures interact and intermingle more actively,” said the Aga Khan. “We hope that this museum will contribute to a better understanding of the peoples of Islam in all of their religious, ethnic, linguistic and social diversity.”

From their earliest origins, Muslim civilizations have been characterized by a remarkable diversity of geographies, languages, and cultures. Toronto – and Canada more generally – is internationally recognized for embracing such diversity. The city therefore provides an ideal home for an institution that strives to promote mutual understanding, respect and tolerance among the world’s cultures.

“The Aga Khan Museum has an international outlook,” said Henry Kim, director of the museum. “Home to a collection of astonishingly beautiful works of art, it will showcase the artistic creativity and achievements of Muslim civilizations from Spain to China. I think local and international visitors will be greatly surprised when they discover just how much the arts of Muslim civilizations are a part of our shared global cultural heritage.”

The museum also plans to host traveling exhibitions, concerts, as well as international conferences and seminars. “Canada is a model and global hub of diversity, ethnicity and inter-mingling cultures, so Toronto became the natural choice for us to set up a modern cultural center showcasing Muslim civilizations,” said Luis Monreal, head of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.

Since 2007, over 1 million people have experienced the splendor of the Aga Khan Museum Collection.
Many museums around the world, including the Sakıp Sabancı Museum in Istanbul, the Louvre in Paris, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur and the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore have all hosted temporary exhibitions of major works of art from the Aga Khan Museum Collection.

The Aga Khan Museum has been established and developed by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, which is an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network. The Aga Khan Trust for Culture focuses on the physical, social, cultural and economic revitalization of communities in the developing world, but some of its programs, including the museum, span both the developed and developing worlds.

September/18/2014
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/a-and-e/a ... z3DgM2yTZR

18 Sept 2014

Op-Ed: Aga Khan Museum opens in Toronto Special

By Elka Weinstei yesterday in Arts

Toronto - After 18 years, the dream of an Islamic centre for art and community has become a reality — not, as originally intended, in London, England, but in Toronto.

This week I attended one of the many opening ceremonies of the Aga Khan museum. It's a triumph indeed. Much has been written recently about the building’s architecture, and about the Aga Khan’s hopes for the museum, gardens, and attached Ismaili Centre, as a centre for cultural diplomacy. An adapted précis of the Aga Khan’s speech was published in the Globe and Mail, and most reviews have been glowing.
Yesterday’s opening was for museum workers and academics. The museum’s staff looked a tiny bit stressed and worn after all of the activity from the week before, but they were still bravely chatting up the guests and certainly made everyone feel welcomed.

The building itself, and its surrounding gardens, are magnificent and look exactly as they did in the artists renderings that were published before they were built. Fumihiko Maki of Japan and Charles Correa from India designed the building, together with Toronto’s Moriyama & Teshima Architects. The surrounding 10 acres of public gardens were created by Lebanese landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic as a contemporary take on Persian Islamic gardens. The 17-acre site also includes the Ismaili Centre, which is a community and cultural centre for the Islamic community of Toronto.

From the outside, the museum looks a little bit like a sultan’s hat, or perhaps a crown, combined with a modern mosque. Inside, the museum building feels both cool and warm, perhaps an effect of the white stone walls and gray slate floors — the central courtyard, decorated with a lacy mashrabiya pattern of an eight-pointed star, lets light into the main space, and creates a feeling of elegance.

As connoisseurs of museum buildings, and their more functional aspects, the guests remarked upon the lovely bathrooms, the spacious auditorium, and the quietly efficient elevators. We were not admitted to the curatorial wing, but if the emphasis on elegant functionality continues into that space, the staff who work here are very fortunate.
During his short speech, Director Henry Kim mentioned that the auditorium and the other spaces in the museum lent themselves to many functions other than simply as museum spaces. Certainly, the multi-use areas are useful, but part of the raison d’etre of a museum is contemplation, and that should not be dismissed.

Perhaps the Bellerive room, which features the ceramics collection of the late Aga Khan and Princess Catherine, is intended to be one such contemplative space. Although it is probably intended as a before-performance lounge for the auditorium, the room is an homage to the “Persian Salon” in the Prince and Princess’ former residence in Geneva. Decorated with Persian rugs, textiles, and beautiful ceramics in rather old-fashioned cases, it is indeed a space for reflection. One of my companions remarked that there is no information about the provenance or history of the contents of the cases, and perhaps that is deliberate.
During the morning of our visit, tours of the art and artifacts with the Education staff were conducted through the permanent gallery while other staff circulated among the guests. Although there are only 1,000 artifacts in the museum’s collection (all from the Aga Khan’s personal collection) each one is a gem, an exquisite example of that particular type of artifact. Some are also very rare, such as a 10th century medical manuscript by Ibn Sinna (Avicenna, a Persian polymath and medical doctor). Other artifacts are enlivened by their unconventional mounts, such as a brocaded silk riding tunic on display in a case by itself.
The two upper galleries are intended for temporary exhibits. Currently, an exhibit in the first gallery, In Search of the Artist: Signed Drawings and Paintings from the Aga Khan Museum Collection, displays Mughal court paintings from the 15th to the 17th centuries (watercolour works on paper) — tracing the genealogy of the master painters from the courts of the Mughal emperors of Persia and India. Many painters traveled between courts or moved from court to court over a lifetime, and masters trained apprentices in court ateliers. Associate Curator Dr. Filiz Çakır Phillip introduced us to the exhibit and then left us to enjoy the sumptuous paintings. How wonderful it must be to work with such treasures, and to be able to trace the links between families of painters over time.

The second exhibit is an exhibit of contemporary art from Pakistan, entitled The Garden of Ideas. According to the website, the exhibit is "the work of six internationally acclaimed Pakistani artists whose creations play with, question, and interrogate the timeless theme of the garden. Several pieces have been made in direct response to works in the Aga Khan Museum’s collection and to the Museum’s own reinterpretation of an Islamic garden (the chahar bagh) as designed by Vladimir Djurovic." The works are indeed playful, and clearly lovingly curated, although the gallery leaves too much space between the works at the beginning, and not enough space between the works on the wall. But this is a minor quibble. David Chalmers Alesworth’s rugs, in particular, evoke colonial town planning — from all points of the former British Empire.

The Aga Khan Museum, like the Bata Shoe Museum and the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, began as the personal collection of a very rich person with wonderful taste. From its very beginning, however, this museum seems to embrace sharing its riches with the Toronto community as a whole. Transforming an urban wasteland in Don Mills, the new gardens and building feel warm, hospitable and openhearted. We look forward to visiting again very soon.

The Aga Khan Museum opens to the public on Thursday at 10 a.m., 77 Wynford Dr., Toronto. Closed Mondays. For tickets and admission protocols see agakhanmuseum.org.

This opinion article was written by an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily intended to reflect those of DigitalJournal.com
Admin
Posts: 6687
Joined: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:37 am
Contact:

Post by Admin »

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-de ... e20624820/

THE AGA KHAN

Ismaili Centre: place of prayer, cradle of friendship

The Aga Khan

Contributed to The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, Sep. 17 2014, 3:00 AM EDT

Last updated Wednesday, Sep. 17 2014, 1:30 PM EDT

The following is adapted from a speech by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Sept. 12 opening of the Ismaili Centre in Toronto.

It is not so often that we have an opportunity of this sort – to come together in a beautiful setting, in a wonderful spirit of friendship, and to dedicate such a splendid architectural accomplishment.

The first North American museum dedicated to Islamic art opens in Toronto this Friday, bankrolled in part by the Aga Khan, the Ismaili Muslim spiritual leader. An art historian says the building houses a number of masterpieces.

As we inaugurate this building, we also have the opportunity to contemplate what it represents: the inspiring traditions of the past, the stirring challenges of the future and the continuing search for peace through prayer.

Canada, of course, has become a significant newer homeland for our community, as Ismailis have come here from so many places – from East Africa, from Tajikistan, from Afghanistan, from Syria and from other parts of the world – all choosing to develop their destinies under the Canadian flag.

One of the ways in which Ismailis have expressed their identity wherever they have lived is through their places of prayer, known today as the jamatkhana. Other Muslim communities give their religious buildings different names: from ribat and zawiyya to khanaqa. In addition, there are places where Muslims of all interpretations can come together, such as non-denominational mosques.

What we dedicate today is what we identify as an Ismaili Centre – a building that is focused around our jamatkhana, but also includes many secular spaces. These are places where Ismailis and non-Ismailis, Muslims and non-Muslims, will gather for shared activities – seminars and lectures, recitals and receptions, exhibitions and social events. These meeting halls and lounges, work offices and conference rooms will serve the organizational needs of the Ismaili community. But they will also, we trust, be filled with the sounds of enrichment, dialogue and warm human rapport.

Soaring above it all is the great crystalline dome that you have observed, through which light from the prayer hall will provide a glowing beacon, symbolizing the spirit of enlightenment that will always be at the heart of the centre’s life.

In its origins, in its design, and in its programs and activities, the complex we inaugurate today is animated by a truly pluralistic spirit. In this respect too, it reflects the deep-set Ismaili values – pluralistic commitments that are so deeply embedded in Canadian values.

The first step in the planning of the centre in the late 1990s was to find an appropriate building site, one that would be convenient to a large number of Ismailis. This was a challenge in and of itself, as we tried to reconcile the needs of more established Ismailis with the requirements of newly arriving and less settled immigrants. After a long search, we selected a site that was little more than half of the space we have today – it was located where the new museum is now standing. Happily, we were successful in acquiring that land, and it was evident that the hands of friendship helped to make that acquisition possible.

As the project progressed, we learned that the Bata family was intending to give up its office building on a site adjacent to ours – an elegant building, but one where time had taken its toll. Once again, the hand of friendship was extended, and Mrs. Sonja Bata made it possible for us to acquire that building. Because it stood on the highest point in the area, we decided to move the Ismaili Centre to this site, and to redesign it accordingly.

The next step, of course, was to seek approval to remove the Bata building. As it became apparent that this building had little residual life, the spirit of friendship again was present and we were authorized to replace it.

As these events unfolded, my late uncle, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, passed away, and his widow, Princess Catherine, invited me to become the owner of their remarkable Islamic art collection. Here again, the hand of generous friendship was extended, this time by my own family. Regrettably, Princess Catherine cannot be with us today. But I might note that the decisive role at critical junctures in this process was played by two remarkable women.

And so it was that things came together. I was able to join my late uncle’s collection with part of the collection I had assembled for the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, and with some of my personal objects. But where should this collection be situated? After discussions with many thoughtful people, the decision was made to build a museum on the very site that had been selected originally for the Ismaili Centre.

I hope you will join in my profound happiness in recalling the cradle of friendship in which this centre has been born. And I know that all of you will also share my profound wish that the centre will now prolong, decade after decade, its beautiful legacy of friendship and enlightenment.
Post Reply