8/9/2019 Yousef Jameel article

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Oasis Magazine24

ART NEWS Yousef Jameel Center for Islamic and Asian Art, Muslims' 1001 Inventions

ISLAMIC ART ONLINE

The Yousef Jameel Online CenterBY PDRAIG BELTON

When the queen visited Oxord to open Elias Ashmole's reur-

bished museum, she did not tarry to sur the Internet. More's thepity. The Internet managing to sprout another website rarely pro-duces good copy, but this ameelcentre.ashmolean.org - maybe the most impressive digitisation o any museum collection yet.

All maor contemporary museums share an ambition to set uptheir stalls online, notes curator Dr Andrew Topseld, whosesuperlative title is as the Ashmolean's Keeper o Eastern Art.Rendered poetically possible by a 2005 beneaction rom theeponymous Youse jameel, the jameel Centre oers virtualgallery space to brandish the particularly vast Islamic and Easterncollections o the University museum; or it, 11,000 obects werephotographed in a sedulous process that began in july 2007,with it going live on 11th February 2010.

It is all beautiul in a way the Internet is rarely beautiul. Sign-posted trails, such through the Islamic ceramic holdings, con-

ure the lost electronic youth, when cyberprocrastination oncehad the allure o being novel, un and perhaps instructive. The

Ashmolean's Islamic collections number over 4,000 pieces; itscollection o Islamic ceramics alone, originating in the Victoriangit o Charles Drury Fortnum (Fortnum's heir, and a proliccatalogue-writer), eatures over 1,500 obects. It is euallyrenowned or its textiles, reputedly the largest collection in theworld: these in good part stem rom the 1941 beuest o Egyp-tologist Percy Newberry, who in 1922 worked in the excavation

o the Tomb o Tutankahmun, and purchased privately a large

collection o historical textiles many rom Fustat, the urbancentre which predated Cairo's oundation in 969.

Not all these textiles are o solely academic interest. Search or'Lawrence' on the jameel Centre website and you will there ndhis robes, thob, zebun and aal lmically given Peter O'Tooleby Omar Shari's composite character 'Sheri Ali', in actuality gito Prince Faisal, native o Ta'i, son o the Shari o Mecca andKing o the Heaz. Lawrence was ater all rst Lawrence o Ox-ord, where his ather, a Westmeath baronet, settled ater feeingIreland with his governess.

It may remain eually novel, not ust in the uantity o obects butalso curatorial inormation now oered beore a worldwide web

audience. Physical visitors, ater the recent renovation doublingthe display space within archeologist and architect CharlesCockerell's 1845 building, and by grace o a beneaction romthe Saudi Crown Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz, stroll through anIslamic Middle East gallery where obects are displayed under-neath proections o the cityscapes that spawned them. Imperialtrinket-hunting has given way to Arab philanthropy, hastenedwith a sense o urgence in understanding the Islamic artistic con-tribution to a global culture. Perhaps not so ar rom Ashmole'soriginal proect, ater all.

www.jameelcentre.ashmolean.org