The Islamic Collection in the Burrell Museum, Glasgow
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
7:00 pm
- Venue
- Russell Square: College Buildings
- Room
- Khalili Lecture Theatre (KLT)
- Event type
- Lecture
About this event
Speaker: Noorah Al-Gailani
Abstract
Sir William Burrell (1861–1958) was a Glasgow merchant shipping owner and a great collector of fine and decorative art. He amassed an impressive collection that included ancient antiquities from Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean; Oriental art from China; Islamic art from the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent and Central Asia; Medieval and Renaissance European art, and modern Western art. In 1944 Burrell bequeathed his collection to the City of Glasgow to be displayed in a dedicated museum named after him, and continued to actively add to it until his death.
This lecture will present the Islamic artefacts that form part of the Burrell Collection in Glasgow. This 9,000-strong collection of art and antiquities includes a group of 453 objects from the Islamic world that comprises ceramics, metal wares, carpets, embroideries and velvets, dating from the tenth to the nineteenth centuries. It will explore Burrell’s interest in this material and how he went about acquiring it and how he displayed it. The lecture will also present the recent redisplay of the museum and the new approach adopted in interpretting its collections. The speaker will also reflect on the challenge of curating Islamic art displays that are located in mixed spaces, juxtaposed with objects from different time periods, cultures and geographical regions, to address new thematic concepts.
Speaker biography
Noorah Al-Gailani is Curator of Islamic Civilisations in the Glasgow Museums. She has worked on the Islamic material in the Burrell Collection since 2003; and was part of the curatorial team that worked on the reinterpretation and redisplay of the collection between 2016 and March 2022 when the museum reopened. She is a generalist museum curator, with an MA in Museum Studies from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, and some 28 years’ experience in the museum sector. She also has a PhD in Theology from the University of Glasgow. Her thesis focused on investigating the material culture of Sufism in Islam through a comparative study of two old but still active Sufi shrines in Iraq and their local and international communities.
Contact
Email: rw51@soas.ac.uk
