Abstract
The creation of the Islamic civilisation gallery at the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra) gallery offered a unique opportunity to reconnect Islamic cultural objects with the people, regions and communities in which they originated, but also presented curators with a broader challenge of connecting Saudi audiences to the wider Muslim world, particularly non-Arab regions and cultures in sub-Saharan Africa and South and South-East Asia.
Establishing an Islamic civilisation gallery in Saudi Arabia raised questions regarding the appropriateness of conventional approaches to audience research, exhibition methodology and presentation of Islamic art as used in other museums abroad. This chapter outlines some findings from the Center’s audience research studies, describing how they proved crucial in the formulation of aims and objectives for the gallery, including its definition of ‘Islamic Art.’
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Notes
- 1.
These objects were either examples of generic artefacts commonly found in international Islamic art galleries, or unique and significant cultural artefacts.
- 2.
Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (also known as the coefficient alpha technique or alpha coefficient of reliability) is a test of reliability as internal consistency. See Cronbach (1951).
- 3.
Most participants restricted the origins of the Islamic art to the core Middle Eastern countries, Turkey and sometimes Spain.
- 4.
One way Ithra does this is through offering special tours titled ‘Story behind the Object,’ where tour guides weave stories that relate factual places and characters around particular objects or group of objects in gallery.
- 5.
Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom, two of the most renowned Islamic art historians working today, wrote that ‘“Islamic Art” is a poor name for an ill-defined subject’ (Blair and Bloom 2003: 174).
References
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Trevathan, I. (2020). Islamic Art and Saudi Arabia: Reconnecting Communities with Collections. In: Norton-Wright, J. (eds) Curating Islamic Art Worldwide. Heritage Studies in the Muslim World. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28880-8_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28880-8_10
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