"Their opening comes 10 months after the Metropolitan Museum of Art
introduced its own new galleries dedicated to the arts of Islam. The
Met, in an effort to avoid defining the collection solely in terms of
religion, chose an unusually long title for its spaces, “The Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia.” The Louvre, on the other hand, has taken the exact opposite approach, calling its galleries simply, “Islam.”
“This is the way the world has spoken about Islam, not only the religion
but the civilization,” explained Sophie Makariou, the Louvre’s director
of Islamic art, insisting that the name is not an oversimplification.
“We were out to tell the history of these people. It’s as complicated as
a textile. There are many different threads and a lot of different
kinds of civilizations who built this world.”"
