Priceless treasures open doors to the East
When Rupert Myer, the new chairman of the National Gallery of Australia council, arrived at the gallery yesterday for a round of meetings, he couldn’t help sidetracking into the exhibitions area for a quick look at Crescent Moon: Islamic Art & Civilisation in South-East Asia.
The gallery’s showcase of more than 180 priceless treasures from 25 public and private collections in five countries opens today, and curators were putting the finishing touches to elaborate displays of crowns, jewelled weapons, antique silks, dance masks and shadow-puppets, blue and white porcelain, wooden objects, and Korans and scriptural works painted in gold.
Mr Myer found himself sitting at the doors of a 19th-century Borneo palace, brought from Sarawak in Malaysia, but originally part of a building in Kalimantan, Indonesia.
Gallery director Ron Radford, who helped curator James Bennett, of the Art Gallery of South Australia, and Robyn Maxwell, of the NGA, plan the exhibition over a period of 15 months, showed Mr Myer the high points of what he said would be a timely show he hoped would increase understanding between Australians and neighbours to the north.
He said that proof of the timeliness had come in a story he heard from the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Michael L’Estrange, who will open the show tonight, that Prime Minister John Howard had asked for two copies of the elaborate catalogue featuring essays in English, Malay and Bahasa Indonesia, to present to his South-East Asian counterparts at a recent Asian summit, a sign of the exhibition’s diplomatic relevance.
The focus on Islamic art and culture is seen by the gallery as especially relevant in light of cartoon representations of the Prophet Muhammad and the evident need for a deeper understanding of Islam and its approach to art.
A galaxy of VIPs arrived in Canberra yesterday for the exhibition, headed by the Sultan of Cirebon Maulana Pangkuningrat, his son Arief Natadiningrat, who is also a member of the Indonesian Parliament, the Assistant Governor of West Java Tubagus Hisni, the director of Museums for Indonesia Intan Madiana, the director of the National Museum of Indonesia Retno Sulistianingsih Sitowati, the director of the National Library of Indonesia Dady P. Rachmananta, head of the Museum Sonobudoyo in Yogyakarta Martono, the chairman of the National Art Gallery of Malaysia Wan Hashim bin Wah Teh, and the Professor of Islamic Art at the Museum of Asian Art, University of Malaya, Othman Yatim.
Mr Radford said an unexpected benefit to the gallery had emerged in the past weeks. With the carbon- dating facilities at the NGA, a wooden throne first thought to be have been crafted in the 19th century had been dated back to the 15th century. The same had been found with many of the Asian textiles in the Islamic exhibition, throwing new light on the early penetration of Islamic culture into the region. He said the gallery’s facilities had been offered to the lending institutions involved in Crescent Moon which might like to have their works dated.
Source: canberra.yourguide.com.au