Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah—An Islamic Art Museum Without Walls

Shaykha Hussah al-Sabah

The Shaykha is the director of the Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah (DAI) in Kuwait, and it was indeed a treat for the Denver audience to learn from her about its collection and its recent troubled history. Before the privately owned DAI was looted and largely destroyed during the Iraqi invasion of 1991, it occupied the largest of the four buildings in the Kuwait National Museum. The traveling exhibition that it had sponsored before the invasion was intended to promote good will, showing to the world that oil-rich Kuwait has both people who care for art and culture and a government that sponsors it.

Shaykha Hussah al-Sabah, the epitome of grace and charm, clearly demonstrated during her conversation with Curator Ronald Otsuka and slide-lecture that this is a collection based on an infatuation with art objects. Although her first interest was in modern abstract Western painting, her husband’s preference for the art of the Islamic world and her own study of the aesthetic philosophy behind the geometric design that is of such central importance to it made her an enthusiastic convert.

The Shaykha described how Islamic culture developed neutral forms whose only purpose was to please, to make agreeable, and thus to beautify, and quoted early Arabic writings of how "visual objects are beautiful only as far as they capture the balance, proportions and symmetries of the universe," and of geometry "enlightening the intellect and purifying the mind like soap." Even the finest calligraphy, the Arabic writing which the Shaykha described as "the glue of Muslim societies," also follows closely prescribed guidelines for balance and harmony.

But it was the beauty and opulence of the objects that captured the hearts and minds of the audience, and to hear how twenty per cent of the DAI collection was damaged and sixty pieces went missing during the Iraqi invasion was truly heart-rending. The Shaykha’s resolve to rebuild and to try to reopen in 2003 was reassuring though, as was the news that, "with or without walls," the DAI is continuing its program of acquisitions, lectures and touring exhibitions.

During the workshop, the Shaykha discussed a number of the objects from the museum’s Southwest Asian collection, and was joined by her friend, art historian Dr. Eleanor Sims, who had flown in from London to attend the event. Following the workshop, a reception honoring this royal guest offered tasty Middle Eastern fare. That the visit happened to fall on the tenth anniversary of the liberation of Kuwait made it all the more poignant.


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