Islamic Art with Simon Rettig

Villa Albertine is pleased to welcome reknown Associate Curator for the Arts of the Islamic World at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, Simon Rettig. For this unique conference, Simon Rettig will take the stage, offering a fascinating conference on “Collecting and Displaying Islamic Art in the Nation’s Capital, after one hundred years”.
Founded in 1923, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, located on the National Mall in the heart of Washington, D.C. is renowned for its holdings of Chinese and Japanese art as well as of American art from the Gilded Age, with iconic Whistler’s Peacock Room. Lesser known, however, are its collections of the arts of the Islamic world. Neither encyclopedic nor comprehensive, it includes, nevertheless, extraordinary objects originating from a vast geographic area extending from Spain to India and dating from the eighth to the nineteenth century. In this talk, Simon Rettig will share the multifaceted story of some of these masterpieces and present the formation of the museum’s collections of Islamic art.