A visit to Caixa Forum Barcelona - January 2010
Aga Khan collection of islamic art from the 8th century onwards
We will visit the exhibition at CaixaForum Barcelona Av. Marquès de Comillas, 6-8 on Saturday, January 9.
See the webpage for the exhibition here: Aga Khan exhibition
Here are the arrangements:
Meet in the foyer, close to the ticket desk.
Saturday, January 9, 2010. We will meet as from 11.45 for a 12.00 start.
The visit will finish around 13.30 and it will be in English! Don't worry about English levels for anyone you want to invite. We can all help with translation.
Early lunch/snack in the Laie Cafe to mix and talk.
Please let me know by email before Tuesday, January 5, 18.00 if you will be coming.
Elements of the Aga Khan Museum's permanent collection have been on tour in Europe in recent years, awaiting completion of the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Canada in 2011.
They have been exhibited at the Palazzo della Pilotta in Parma, the Ismaili Centre in London, and at the Louvre in Paris. A showing in Lisbon opened in March 2008 at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. And now it is at CaixaForum in Madrid.
The exhibits have received wide international acclaim. Organized in two parts: The Word of God, consisting of sacred texts and related objects and The Power of the Sovereign, reflecting Muslim courts and their figures. The exhibit conveys both din and duniya, which can be translated as ‘Spirit & Life’ — the religious and secular aspects of life which are inextricably linked in Muslim cultures.
The exhibition includes several superb examples of Qur'an manuscripts that demonstrate the variety of script, media and decorative styles that evolved in the Muslim world. Among them, an eighth century North African folio demonstrates the earliest style of kufic script written on parchment. A page from the well known Blue Qur'an provides an example of gold kufic script on indigo-dyed parchment. The Blue Qur'an is considered one of the most extraordinary Qur'an manuscripts ever created; its origins are 9th-tenth century North African, and it was likely created for the Fatimid imam-caliphs ruling from Qayrawan.
wikipedia entry for the Aga Khan Museum where you can discover more.
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