Indian Museum to Open Islamic Art Gallery
Hyderabad’s famed Salar Jung Museum, which boasts the largest one-man collection of antiques and art treasures in the world, is setting up an exclusive gallery for Islamic art.
More than 2,500 rare Islamic artefacts currently displayed in various parts of the museum as well as some that have never been showcased in public will find a place in this gallery. At present, these treasures of Islamic art are scattered over various galleries under Indian, Middle Eastern, European and Far Eastern art collections.
The exclusive Islamic art gallery will present all these forms of Islamic art at one place.
The Islamic art gallery was to open much earlier but the work was affected because of Covid-19, and the unavailability of skilled labour only added to the problem, Dr A. Nagender Reddy, director of Salar Jung Museum, said in an exclusive interview to Khaleej Times. The work has been, however, expedited now and the gallery will be ready for inauguration by the end of 2022, he added.
The art collection at Salar Jung Museum is so huge and varied that only three other museums in the world — the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum (both located in the United Kingdom) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, — can rival it. Salar Jung Museum is the second-highest revenue-generating museum in India, next only to Kolkata’s Victoria Memorial. The Islamic art gallery is expected to further increase its footfall.
The idea of having an exclusive Islamic art gallery germinated when as many as 413 Islamic artefacts from Salar Jung Museum became the centre of attraction during the ‘Glimpses of Courtly Splendour’, an exhibition of Indian Islamic art held in Sharjah, UAE, in 2009.
Source: Khaleej Times
