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Third Jewel in LACMA's Crown

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Art has always been valued for its ability to bridge cultures and for bringing about cross-cultural understanding. With its recently acquired Madina Collection of Islamic art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) aims to do just that.

The addition of the Madina Collection will double the size of the museums already impressive holdings of Islamic art, establishing the museum as one of the world's 10 best collections of Islamic art and one of the top three collections of centuries-old Islamic art in the United States. The collection contains works dating from the late 7th through 19th centuries -- art encompassing the vast Islamic world, from Southern Spain to Central Asia.

Dr. Maan Madina, 76, a native of Syria, acquired the collection of 750 objects of decorative arts, architectural decoration, and calligraphy over the past forty years. Dr. Mann is a professor emeritus of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University in New York. The collection contains objects from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Spain, and North Africa. It includes more than 250 glazed ceramics and tiles, more than 50 works of calligraphy, 65 textiles, and 50 glass objects.

"The acquisition of this renowned collection of Islamic art, the result of a lifetime of collecting by a respected scholar and teacher, further strengthens LACMA's role as the foremost museum in the Western United States where the people of Los Angeles and its visitors can view great art from all cultures and historical periods from across the globe," said LACMA President and Director Andrea L. Rich in a statement released by the museum. "These extraordinary works illustrate the richness and diversity of the Islamic culture and reveal its creative contribution to humankind. It is a particularly appropriate juncture in our history to learn from that connectivity of cultures."

In 1973, the museum began collecting Islamic art with its acquisition of 650 works from the Nasli M. Heeramaneck Collection, a gift of LACMA benefactor Joan Palevsky. The Heeramaneck/Palevsky collection, was built between the 1920s and 1960s. The collection contains ceramics and manuscript illustration and calligraphy, from the greater Iranian world, specifically, Iran, Afghanistan, parts of Iraq, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. With the addition of the Madina Collection, the museum hopes to provide visitors with a more comprehensive view of Islamic art and culture.

"For an American audience, a visit to the Islamic galleries of a museum such as LACMA can represent the first step toward penetrating the history of a religion and culture that are often in the news though little understood," said Linda Komaroff, LACMA's curator of Islamic Art.