| Beginning with the premise that the meaning and value of Islamic art remains largely misunderstood by the American public, this study examines specific difficulties inherent in Islamic art as well as its formal study, which do not lend themselves accessible to the visual understanding of the non-Muslim especially within the confines of the museum.;The first part of the study discusses the rising interest in Islam among the American public, explores how collections of Islamic art were formed in the United States, and traces the major exhibitions of Islamic artifacts that were developed by American museums over the course of the past three decades.;The second part of the study argues that the difficulties associated with the comprehension of Islamic art arise from two sources: those that are inherent in the nature of Islamic art itself, and those that occur as a result of the application of western tools of artistic criticism to the evaluation of the Islamic artistic heritage. The study reviews the literature on the nature of Islamic art and investigates the salient historical, intellectual, and functional concerns which have shaped the path of the artistic heritage of Islam. Furthermore, it identifies the critical approaches traditionally employed by western art historians in the documentation of Islamic art, and traces their effect on shaping the public's understanding of the material heritage of Islam.;To test the theoretical insights distilled from the literature on Islamic art, a small pilot study was carried out which involved an open-ended questionnaire administered to twelve art students as they engaged with Islamic artifacts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A qualitative analysis of the findings revealed that the majority of subjects exhibited a difficulty in understanding the essence of Islamic art and most tended to resort to their own western standards of artistic criticism to decipher its meaning.;The work of the dissertation lends credence to the argument that Islamic art is a unique heritage with it own framework of meaning and structure of reference. To comprehend its essence, one must, therefore, approach it from the content of Islam---from the unique socio-cultural circumstance which have shaped its character and molded its language. |
