People of Color in European Art History

This exhibition features a selection of more than three dozen historical examples of Islamic arms and armor, which represent the breadth and depth of The Met's renowned holdings in this area. Focusing primarily on the courts of the Mamluk and Ottoman sultans, shahs of Iran, and Mughal emperors of India, the exhibition celebrates the publication of Islamic Arms and Armor in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum's first scholarly volume on the subject.

For Garb Week!

Even though it’s a mermaid costume, the outfit itself is based on 17th century Safavid clothing and jewelry.When I decided to get into mermaiding, I was (if not still am) the only Iranian in the community. Which kind of left me open to doing whatever I wanted. And while the tail is great, and works for “sea faerie” interpretations, I wanted to have something I could walk in, so I turned to the older version in our mythology for inspiration, the “water people”… I picked the 17-18th century styling because that seems to be popular among the mermaid and pirate costuming community.

Aside from being a semi-professional mermaid, I’m also a historical model for Orientalism and the Age of Steam, and a costumer.

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The Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s museums of Asian art, will release their entire collections online Jan. 1, 2015, providing unprecedented access to one of the world’s most important holdings of Asian and American art. The vast majority of the 40,000 artworks have never before been seen by the public, and more than 90 percent of the images will be in high resolution and without copyright restrictions for noncommercial use.

“We’re poised at a digital tipping point, and the nature of what it means to be a museum is changing,” said Julian Raby, the Dame Jillian Sackler Director of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art. “We strive to promote the love and study of Asian art, and the best way we can do so is to free our unmatched resources to inspire appreciation, academic study and artistic creation.”

The museum’s masterpieces range in time from the Neolithic to the present day, featuring especially fine groupings of Chinese jades and bronzes, Islamic art, Chinese paintings and masterworks from ancient Persia. Currently, the collection boasts 1,806 American art objects, 1,176 ancient Egyptian objects, 2,076 ancient Near Eastern objects, 10,424 Chinese objects, 2,683 Islamic objects, 1,213 South and Southeast Asian objects and smaller groupings of Korean, Armenian, Byzantine, Greek and Roman works. In addition, the Freer Study Collection—more than 10,000 objects used by scholars around the world for scientific research and reference—will be viewable for the first time.

The arrival of European traders was soon reflected in the art of Safavid Iran. Male dress, poses from oil portraits, and the depiction of architecture and landscapes were all incorporated into traditional Persian paintings. Here the languid, handsome youth popular in many early seventeenth-century albums appears in the type of costume worn by Portuguese visitors to the court.

The Byzantine emperor, concerned about the possibility of an invasion by the mighty Iranian forces, sent an embassy under his general Mihras carrying a letter of conciliation and lavish gifts, and a peaceful agreement was eventually concluded. In the miniature, the letter–which assumes a special significance in this context, since the Ilkhanid rulers and the Catholic pope exchanged similar missives–and the gifts in the form of gold cups are shown at the foot of the shah's throne. Mihras is represented as a type of Crusader, something between a warrior and a priest, wearing a helmet and holding a cross.