Earthy Art - Heavenly Beauty. The Art of Islam

The exhibition was prepared by the State Hermitage Museum and the National Foubdation of the New Church (Amsterdam) in cooperation with the Benaki Museum (Athens), the collection of Islamic art of Nasser D. Khalili (London), the Manuscript House (Sana), the Metropolitan Museum (New-York) and the British Museum (London). On display there are nearly 350 works of art from different parts of Islamic world - from Spain to the Northern India - enveloping thirteen centuries - from the 7th to 19th centuries. This temporary exhibition is aimed at showing the common character of aesthetic attitudes of culture, of which Koran and Moslem traditions are the fundamentals, within the wide limits of the Moslem world, at revealing the beauties and peculiarities of the language of Moslem art and at demonstrating how this art expresses Islamic world outlook. The exhibition on the one hand has to underline close kinship of Moslem art with traditional European artistic systems, on the other hand it is supposed to stress alien features of this art though pointing out their charm. This concept could only be realised through joint efforts of a number of the world largest collections of Moslem art as each of them has gaps that make it impossible for one collection to represent all the sides of this richest culture.

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Director of the Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky and Imam - khatib of Friday Mosque of
St.- Petersburg Ja'far Ponchaev at the opening ceremony of the exhibition

At the Exhibiton Opening Ceremony live music was played

First visitors