9 Aug_ICAE_Book_with PT Notes

24 GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
ON THE ISLAMIC CREATIVE ECONOMY
FEATURED INTERVIEW
Anna
Sommers
Cocks
Anna Somers Cocks is
the Founding Editor of
The Art Newspaper, with
offices in London and New
York, and Chairman of its
publishers, U. Allemandi
& Co. Publishing Ltd.
She was Chairman of the
Venice in Peril Fund from
1999 to 2012. She is an
Officer of the Order of
the British Empire (OBE)
and Commendatore
della Stella di Solidarietà
Italiana. She has published
articles in The Guardian,
the New York Review
of Books, la Repubblica,
the New Statesman and
has organised exhibitions
at the Victoria & Albert
Museum, the Hermitage
Museum at the Villa
Favorita in Lugano, and as
part of the 2011 Venice
Biennale.
As someone who has seen so many
exhibitions and has travelled the world, do
you feel that Islamic Art tells you enough
about Islamic culture?
No, because Islamic Art is only a small piece
of Islamic culture. Islamic culture is first and
foremost about the spoken and written word.
This comes from the role that the Qu’ran
plays in everyday life. But in museums, you
tend to see the same types of objects again
and again: the mosque lamp, bronze vessels,
inlays, Egyptian ceramics, etc. There is a lot
these days you can do to enhance collections,
like displaying manuscripts through digital
libraries, recording someone reciting the
verse on their pages and showing a greater
variety of pieces besides traditional objects
of Islamic Art.
What do you think Dubai can do to
influence the spread of Islamic Culture and
Art?
It must show that such art expresses the
constructive spread of culture across the
world. It would also be influential to interact
with something in the modern world. Think
of the Aga Khan and his prize for Islamic
architecture. This encourages people who
build something in the Islamic world in a
style that is suitable for the modern age, and
yet has distinctive, local characteristics.
You are talking about initiating another
type of Aga Khan or Jameel Prize?
Not necessarily initiating a prize, but creating
a museum that shows Islamic living today as
expressed through material objects. If Dubai
is going to produce a museum, it should be
for good, useful and beautiful things that
are produced from parts of the world where
Islam is dominant. I think if Dubai is one
thing, it aims to promote the all-embracing
rather than the excluding form of Islam. That
is an important message. Things flowed in
the past and they flow now and I think your
founding mission would be to say that this is
a museum of material culture coming out of
countries across the world that have Islam as
their dominant culture.