Curating Islamic Art in European Museums: Museology and Postcolonial Shifts (Routledge Research in Museum Studies)

Since the early 2000s many museums around the world have been either reorganising or creating ex nihilo galleries dedicated to Islamic art.This movement has often been attributed by the press and scholars as a response to international geopolitical events.Challenging this prevailing narrative, in this book Jame examines these developments as part of a longue durée process rooted in evolving art historical perspectives and institutional efforts to de-Europeanise their approaches.Thus, she explores how Islamic art was presented and interpreted within Western European museums in the 2010s.Through transnational comparative research, the book offers a comprehensive analysis of curatorial strategies across major European museums with significant Islamic art collections, focusing on the Département des Arts de l’Islam at the Musée du Louvre, the Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World at the British Museum, and the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin.Jame examines how these instit