Sanaa Boutayeb

Since 1970 Pro­fes­sor Nasser D Khalili has been assem­bling his his­toric col­lec­tion of Islamic art. This he has done under the aus­pices of The Khalili Fam­ily Trust. With hold­ings of more than 20,000 objects doc­u­ment­ing the range of artis­tic pro­duc­tion of the Islamic lands over a period of some 1,400 years, the Col­lec­tion now ranks among the best in the world.

The Khalili Col­lec­tion rep­re­sents a new gen­er­a­tion of Islamic art col­lec­tions. Its hold­ings include an out­stand­ing array of minia­ture paint­ings and illus­trated man­u­scripts, and the cov­er­age of the dec­o­ra­tive arts — ceram­ics, tex­tiles, glass, met­al­work and oth­ers — is com­pre­hen­sive. In this it ful­fils the long­stand­ing West­ern con­cep­tion of what is impor­tant in Islamic art, but the Col­lec­tion has not been overly influ­enced by this essen­tially alien, and dis­torted, view. On the con­trary, it was formed with an acute aware­ness of the cri­te­ria by which Mus­lims them­selves have judged and still judge their art. As a result a cen­tral place has been given to the art of cal­lig­ra­phy, which plays an essen­tial role in the art of the Islamic world. Read More

Bar­rie Osborne, part of the Oscar-winning team behind the Lord of the Rings films, says the new pro­duc­tion ‘will edu­cate peo­ple about the true mean­ing of Islam’.

Pro­ducer Bar­rie Osborne cast Keanu Reeves as the mes­siah in The Matrix and helped defeat the dark lord Sauron in his record-breaking Lord of the Rings tril­ogy. Now the Oscar-winning Amer­i­can film-maker is set to embark on his most per­ilous quest to date: mak­ing a big-screen biopic of the prophet Muhammad.

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FAITH IN ACTION by Kather­ine Marshall

Aicha Ech Channa, a gutsy Moroc­can woman, has worked for five decades with young unmar­ried moth­ers, who stand at the very bot­tom of the social heap in her coun­try. Even if their preg­nancy resulted from rape, they are con­demned as pros­ti­tutes and thrown out by their fam­i­lies, and their babies are stig­ma­tized as bastards.

For her work Mrs. Ech Channa just received the world’s largest faith-based prize for social entre­pre­neur­ship. That’s the Opus Prize and it’s for one mil­lion dollars.

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2009 Opus Prize Final­ist : Aïcha Ech Channa

She will be in DC this week to receive the Opus prize given annu­ally to rec­og­nize unsung heroes of any faith tra­di­tion any­where in the world, solv­ing today’s most per­sis­tent social problems.

to read more: http://www.opusprize.org/winners/09_Ech-Channa.cfm

Inter­na­tional Sym­po­sium on Cul­tural Diplo­macy (Berlin, 27th-31st, 2009)

“Soft Power Explained” - A Video Lec­ture By Har­vard Uni­ver­sity Pro­fes­sor Joseph S. Nye Jr.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, Octo­ber 14, 2009 — Lin­earis Insti­tute is pleased to present the first lim­ited edi­tion print of Mohamed Zakariya’s cal­lig­ra­phy, the orig­i­nal of which was com­mis­sioned by U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama as a gift to King Abdul­lah Bin Abdu­laziz of Saudi Ara­bia on June 3, 2009.  Mohamed Zakariya, an Amer­i­can mas­ter of Islamic cal­lig­ra­phy, has been rep­re­sented exclu­sively since 2001 by Lin­earis Insti­tute, a pub­lic repos­i­tory for the visual arts spe­cial­iz­ing in works on paper.

Zakariya will also give a spe­cial pre­sen­ta­tion on his ancient craft on the evening of Octo­ber 23, 2009, at the de Young Museum in San Fran­cisco, as part of the Museum’s Cul­tural Encoun­ters program.

To read more visit: http://www.linearisinstitute.org

Wel­come to my blog.