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32 GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES<br />
ON THE ISLAMIC CREATIVE ECONOMY<br />
FEATURED INTERVIEW<br />
Dr. Sheila<br />
Canby<br />
In October 2009, Dr. Sheila<br />
Canby was appointed Patti<br />
Cadby Birch Curator in<br />
charge of the Islamic Art<br />
Metropolitan Museum<br />
of Art, having served as<br />
Curator of Islamic Art and<br />
Antiquities at the British<br />
Museum from 1991 to<br />
2009. Her department’s<br />
new galleries for the Art<br />
of the Arab Lands, Turkey,<br />
Iran, Central Asia and<br />
Later South Asia opened<br />
in 2011. Her publications<br />
include Shah`Abbas and the<br />
Imperial Treasures of Iran<br />
(2009), Islamic Art in Detail<br />
(2005), Hunt for Paradise:<br />
Court Arts of Safavid Iran<br />
(1501-76), The Golden<br />
Age of Persian Art (1501-<br />
1722), Persian Painting,<br />
and The Shahnama of Shah<br />
Tahmasp (2011 and 2014.<br />
She recently worked on an<br />
exhibition on Seljuk art that<br />
opened at the Metropolitan<br />
Museum of Art last year.<br />
What for you is Islamic Art?<br />
There has been so much discussion of the<br />
nomenclature. Islamic Art is easier to say<br />
than “the Art of the Arab lands, Turkey, Iran,<br />
Central Asia and later South Asia.” There<br />
are certain definable ideas and motifs that<br />
appear across these geographical regions<br />
and those are what people define the art<br />
by. When those things are present, they<br />
consider the art to be Islamic or at least be<br />
influenced by Islam.<br />
What are the aspects that make a work<br />
Islamic?<br />
The basics are the use of Arabic script as<br />
informational or decorative, the use of<br />
geometry for everything from garden design<br />
to decoration on metalwork and ceramics<br />
and textiles; there is also the vine scroll,<br />
which is a repeating and continuous design,<br />
so the ability of the vine scroll to be infinite is<br />
something that seems to characterise much<br />
of the decoration in Islamic Art. There are<br />
also forms in architecture that derive from<br />
mosques… and the house <strong>with</strong> the interior<br />
courtyard, which is found from Morocco to<br />
India.<br />
What do you think Islamic Art suffers from<br />
today?<br />
I think everything to do <strong>with</strong> the Islamic<br />
world suffers from all the strife and misery<br />
and war that is going on. At the same time, I<br />
think Islamic Art stands as the antidote and I
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