The Museum of Islamic Art of the National Museums in Berlin today launched its online portal islamic-art.smb.museum It is the first digital platform in the German-speaking world to present Islamic cultures in a professional, innovative and entertaining way. “Islamic Art” is now available free of charge in German, English and Arabic.
Image above: Online portal “Islamic Art”, 360° tour: Music in the Museum with Dima Orsho and Bukahara, © National Museums in Berlin, Museum of Islamic Art
The Museum of Islamic Art of the National Museums in Berlin today launched its online portal islamic-art.smb.museum. It is the first digital platform in the German-speaking world to present Islamic cultures in a professional, innovative and entertaining way. “Islamic Art” is now available free of charge in German, English and Arabic.
islamic-art.smb.museum Works with the four modules Stories, 360° Tours, Media Library and Digital Learning
Stories guide visitors through the thematic worlds of the Museum of Islamic Art’s collection, provide multimedia access to the objects and offer exciting insights into the museum’s work. Through cross-collection links, the Stories invite visitors to explore related objects, themes and stories. They show that art and cultural history are only conceivable and narratable in the context of diversity, change, migration, exchange and mobility. Users decide for themselves which path to follow according to their individual interests and can thus influence the experience themselves. For the launch of the platform, the three special exhibitions “Gurbet Şarkıları. Songs from Abroad. Music and Belonging between Turkey and Germany (1961-2021)”, “Samarra Revisited. Excavation Photographs from the Caliph’s Palaces Revisited” and “In:complete. Destroyed – Divided – Complemented”; further stories will be published continuously.
360° tours make it possible to virtually experience the museum’s themes in generic spaces. Users are given explorative access to the objects in the collection. A first highlight is the music tour, which consists of various formats. For example, the “Mschatta Lounge” is presented, a concert series that took place live in the museum’s Mschatta Hall in 2019. The musicians involved each chose an object from the exhibition and interpreted it in their musical language. For example, the 360° tour includes a performance by musician Elshan Ghasimi, who presents specially composed pieces on three ceramics from the collection, while artist Zsanett Szirmay sets samples from the Museum of Islamic Art’s carpet collection to music. A 360° tour on the theme of garden paradises and insights into the redesign of the museum’s permanent exhibition will follow later this year.
The media library gives users access to films, music videos, images, audio files and e-publications that provide insights into the history of the museum and the restoration of objects, as well as information on the history and cultural heritage of Islamic cultural areas.
The Digital Learning section brings Islamic art and cultural history directly into the classroom. The materials from the project “Common Past – Common Future II”, funded by the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media, are based on the curricula and can thus be used in regular school lessons in many subjects (including art, music, ethics/religion, politics) and grades. In the “Background Information” section, educators and educational media editors will find lecture videos, handouts and checklists with professional expertise, for example on how to deal with pictorial representations in Islamic contexts. In addition, materials from the educational project “TAMAM” are made available. In this project, mosques together with the Museum of Islamic Art developed materials for extracurricular education and youth work from 2015 to 2018.
As the oldest museum of Islamic art outside Islamic regions, the Museum of Islamic Art houses around 100,000 historical objects. They originate from the Mediterranean region (Southern Europe, North Africa, West Asia) as well as Central and South Asia and were created between the 7th and 19th centuries. In addition to its exhibition work in the Pergamonmuseum, the collection is particularly active in the fields of international cooperation in foreign cultural policy, political and social education on the subject of Islam in Germany, and cultural heritage and migration in and from the collection’s countries of origin. With its unique selling point as the only German-language reference museum on the art and cultural history of the Islamic world, the museum is breaking new ground in making the breadth and depth of the collection’s contents digitally accessible to various social groups.
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WHERE?
Museum of Islamic Art (Museum für Islamische Kunst)
Bodestraße 1-3
10178 Berlin-Mitte
