Aga Khan Museum - TO

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https://www.agakhanmuseum.org/

[kassambhai]

Aga Khan Museum in North York to open Sept. 18
Music festival events planned for opening weekend
North York Mirror
By JEAN KO DIN

The Aga Khan Museum has announced it will be opening its doors to the public on Thursday, Sept. 18.

The museum’s permanent collection will feature over 1,000 items that showcase Islamic art, culture and history.

Some artifacts will include portraits, manuscripts, medical texts and musical instruments from the Iberian Peninsula to China.

Before finding its home next door to the Ismaili Centre near Eglington Avenue and the Don Valley Parkway, the museum collection travelled to famous museums around the world, including the Louvre museum in Paris, France and the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore.

The Aga Khan Museum will be the first museum in North America to be dedicated to the cultural and scientific heritage of Islamic civilizations of the world.

The museum will be celebrating its grand opening with an Opening Music Festival on Sept. 20 and 21.

Source: http://www.insidetoronto.com/news-story ... n-sept-18/

[kassambhai]

CBC Toronto News has a brief look inside the Aga Khan Museum.
Manually forwarded the time index clock to 22:22.
Enjoy.

http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Canada/T ... 93467524/

[kassambhai]

its the same video as above but its been trimmed to include only the museum story.
enjoy.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/n ... -1.2742387

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http://www.canadianarchitect.com/news/a ... 55/?&er=NA

DAILY NEWS Aug 21, 2014 2:33 AM -


Aga Khan Museum to open next month

2014-08-21

The Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, which is dedicated to presenting an overview of the artistic, intellectual, and scientific contributions that Muslim civilizations have made to world heritage, will open its doors to the public on September 18, 2014.

The Museum’s permanent collection of over 1,000 objects includes masterpieces that reflect a broad range of artistic styles and materials. These portraits, textiles, miniatures, manuscripts, ceramics, tiles, medical texts, books and musical instruments represent more than ten centuries of human history and a geographic area stretching from the Iberian Peninsula to China.

Designed by architect Fumihiko Maki, the Museum shares a 6.8-hectare (17-acre) site with Toronto’s Ismaili Centre, which was designed by architect Charles Correa. The surrounding landscaped park, designed by landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic, will provide an exciting new green space for the city of Toronto.

“One of the lessons we have learned in recent years is that the world of Islam and the Western world need to work together much more effectively at building mutual understanding – especially as these cultures interact and intermingle more actively,” commented His Highness the Aga Khan. “We hope that this museum will contribute to a better understanding of the peoples of Islam in all of their religious, ethnic, linguistic and social diversity.”

From their earliest origins, Muslim civilizations have been characterized by a remarkable diversity of geographies, languages, and cultures. Toronto – and Canada more generally – is internationally recognized for embracing such diversity. The city therefore provides an ideal home for an institution that strives to promote mutual understanding, respect and tolerance among the world’s cultures.

“The Aga Khan Museum has an international outlook,” observes Henry Kim, Director of the Museum. “Home to a collection of astonishingly beautiful works of art, it will showcase the artistic creativity and achievements of Muslim civilizations from Spain to China. I think local and international visitors will be greatly surprised when they discover just how much the arts of Muslim civilizations are a part of our shared global cultural heritage.”

Since 2007, over 1 million people have experienced the splendor of the Aga Khan Museum Collection. The Musée du Louvre in Paris, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, the Sakip Sabanci Museum in Istanbul, the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur and the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore have all hosted temporary exhibitions of major works of art from the Aga Khan Museum Collection.

For more information about the Aga Khan Museum, its upcoming exhibitions and programming, please visit www.agakhanmuseum.org. Please also visit the Canadian Architect issue dedicated to the 2013 RAIC Gold Medal winner His Highness the Aga Khan at www.canadianarchitect.com/issues/toc.as ... =11/2/2013.

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http://www.artlyst.com/articles/new-aga ... ilisations

Art News

Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Muslim Culture


New Aga Khan Museum To Showcase Cultural Contributions of Muslim Civilisations

19-08-2014

Bookmark and Share

A new Museum to showcase the cultural and scientific contributions of Muslim civilizations is to open in Toronto Canada in September.The Aga Khan Museum will be dedicated to presenting an overview of artistic, intellectual, and scientific contributions that Muslim civilizations have made to world heritage.

The Museum’s Permanent Collection of over 1,000 objects includes masterpieces that reflect a broad range of artistic styles and materials. These portraits, textiles, miniatures, manuscripts, ceramics, tiles, medical texts, books and musical instruments represent more than ten centuries of human history and a geographic area stretching from the Iberian Peninsula to China.

Designed by architect Fumihiko Maki, the Museum shares a 6.8-hectare (17-acre) site with Toronto’s Ismaili Centre, which was designed by architect Charles Correa. The surrounding landscaped park, designed by landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic, will provide an exciting new green space for the city of Toronto. “One of the lessons we have learned in recent years is that the world of Islam and the Western world need to work together much more effectively at building mutual understanding — especially as these cultures interact and intermingle more actively,” commented His Highness the Aga Khan. “We hope that this museum will contribute to a better understanding of the peoples of Islam in all of their religious, ethnic, linguistic, and social diversity.”

From their earliest origins, Muslim civilizations have been characterized by a remarkable diversity of geographies, languages, and cultures. Toronto — and Canada more generally — is internationally recognized for embracing such diversity. The city therefore provides an ideal home for an institution that strives to promote mutual understanding, respect and tolerance among the world’s cultures.

“The Aga Khan Museum has an international outlook,” observes Henry Kim, Director of the Museum. “Home to a collection of astonishingly beautiful works of art, it will showcase the artistic creativity and achievements of Muslim civilizations from Spain to China. I think local and international visitors will be greatly surprised when they discover just how much the arts of Muslim civilizations are a part of our shared global cultural heritage.”

Since 2007, over 1 million people have experienced the splendor of the Aga Khan Museum Collection. The Musée du Louvre in Paris, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, the Sakıp Sabancı Museum in Istanbul, the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur and the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore have all hosted temporary exhibitions of major works of art from the Aga Khan Museum Collection.

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Below is a link documenting the start of a long journey as we prepare for the opening of the Aga Khan Museum.
Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt_MX7RwKQA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWW0iSMsUYA

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As Received

49 Wynford Drive is the address of Ismaili Centre Toronto

77 Wynford Drive is the address of the Aga Khan Museum


49th Imam

Age 77

[tret]

As Received

49 Wynford Drive is the address of Ismaili Centre Toronto

77 Wynford Drive is the address of the Aga Khan Museum


49th Imam

Age 77

do we know the date of opening by MHI? 12/9 or 13/9? Can jama'at stand outside on wynford dr to get a gimps of of Maula? I think i heard the event would be telecasted? can you confirm that please?

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once again rumor has it an announcement will be made today (sept 3) in all khanes.

[Admin]

The announcement in Jk said tonight that Hazar Imam will be opening the Museum on 12th September. The date was already known since a long time. I wonder why they tried to hide the date from the Jamat. In French it is known as "Secret de Polichinelle"

The expression “Polichinelle’s secret” refers to something that everyone knows.

[tret]

The announcement in Jk said tonight that Hazar Imam will be opening the Museum on 12th September. The date was already known since a long time. I wonder why they tried to hide the date from the Jamat. In French it is known as "Secret de Polichinelle"

The expression “Polichinelle’s secret” refers to something that everyone knows.

do we know if it's in the AM or PM?

[Admin]

http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-aga- ... 1409880616

Arts & Entertainment

The Aga Khan's New Islamic Treasure Trove

The Imam's vast collection will be housed in a new Toronto museum opening Sept. 18


By
Kelly Crow
connect
Sept. 4, 2014 9:30 p.m. ET

Toronto's New Aga Khan Museum

Toronto's Aga Khan Museum will give visitors a permanent spot to see one of the top private collections of Islamic art anywhere. © 2014 The Aga Khan Museum/Tom Arban (photo)

Toronto

Plenty of museums around the world collect Islamic art—from ornate Persian carpets to Mughal miniature paintings—but there's never been a museum in North America focused solely on exhibiting these pieces, until now.

On Sept. 18, Toronto's Aga Khan Museum will open in a 31,500 square-foot space designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki, giving visitors a permanent spot to see one of the top private collections of Islamic art anywhere.

Standing near an elevated highway in a middle-class neighborhood, the museum appears futuristic, its milky granite walls crenelated in a few places to make room for angled skylights. Inside, the galleries are airy but the lights are kept low to protect fragile textiles and works on paper. A huge garden surrounds the museum, speckled with reflecting pools and rows of serviceberry trees and sage.

Mr. Maki is known for designing skyscrapers like New York's 4 World Trade Center, and the museum fits into the Japanese architect's sleek style. But the main draw for art lovers will likely be what's on display inside.

Collectors and curators have long coveted the ancient astrolabes and Mongolian robes amassed by the museum's namesake, Prince Shah Karim Al Husseini. The 77-year-old British billionaire goes by the honorary title of Aga Khan because he serves as spiritual leader for least 12 million members of the second-largest branch of Shia Islam, the Nizari Ismaili sect. (His Turkish-Persian title means "lord and commander.")

Half a century before the sovereign families of the Arabian Peninsula started buying art, the Aga Khan's forebears were known for frequenting London auction houses in search of art from across the Islamic world, a civilization that during its Renaissance-era height swept from Spain to the western border of China. He and his family have since lent pieces to major museums, but they haven't displayed the full sweep of their holdings before.

The Aga Khan, in a telephone interview from his home in Chantilly, north of Paris, joined by his younger brother Prince Amyn, said the genesis of the family's collection starts with their grandfather and uncle, both of whom were voracious collectors. Growing up in Kenya and, later, Switzerland, the Aga Khan and his brother said they were surrounded by art at home. Not all of it was Islamic: Their father, Prince Aly Khan, also loved the French Impressionists. But the Aga Khan said Harvard art historian Stuart Cary Welch encouraged the family to focus on Islamic art during the 1950s and 1960s. Their uncle eventually filled his Geneva château, called Belle Rive, with Islamic ceramics. (The museum has imported some of Prince Sadruddin's red display cabinets and plans to recreate one of his Belle Rive rooms.)

All of this explains why the Aga Khan said he was "shocked" when he started college at Harvard in the mid-1950s and found out that his classmates didn't know much about Islamic art or culture. His peers could rattle off the names of a few European Old Masters and pinpoint ancient styles from China—but none of them recognized a single artist from the Muslim world, he said.

"The inspiration for art isn't all that different, frankly, across civilizations and time," he said. "The goal should be to understand the art and those civilizations better, not to criticize or ignore them."

He began slowly, buying a few artworks after his grandfather died in 1957 and named him the next spiritual leader, or imam, of his sect at the age of 20. His personal collection was eclectic and included Islamic ceramics as well as European sculptors Alberto Giacometti and Auguste Rodin. "Believe it or not, I collected Bruegel," he said, referring to Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the Dutch Old Master. "I liked his sense of humor."

But by the 1990s, he had narrowed his collecting focus to Islamic art, particularly Indian miniature paintings that highlighted the architecture and gardens of the Mughal era.

Plans took another turn in 2003 when his uncle died, and the Aga Khan and his relatives had to figure out what to do with his uncle's estate. They decided to pool the Aga Khan's Mughal collection with his uncle's broader holdings and create a museum "in a great Western city with no major Islamic collections," he said.

The Aga Khan The Aga Khan Museum

Those parameters ruled out Paris and London, which have encyclopedic museums containing prized Islamic collections. But why choose Toronto? Turns out, Canada played a key role in accepting thousands of Nizari Ismailis who were living in Uganda but applied for asylum in 1972 when President Idi Amin notoriously expelled Asian people. Today, the Aga Khan said Canada is home to 100,000 Ismailis, and his museum is meant to be an extension of his support for them. (He's also commissioned a community center and prayer hall for them next to the museum, bringing the total bill for the project to $300 million.)

Museum director Henry Kim, a Greek coin expert who formerly oversaw the reinstallation of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, said curators are also arranging displays and planning shows to appeal to broader audiences as well. During its debut, around 300 objects will go on view, with nearly three times as many additional artworks waiting in storage.

The top floor of the museum will be anchored by a show of contemporary art from Pakistan, led by a new series of site-specific drawings by Imran Qureshi, who last year covered the roof of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in his red, abstract drawings.

Overall, the gem of the museum's permanent collection is its group of illustrated pages from the poem, "Shahtamasp Shah-Nameh." The poem is a King Arthur-like Persian tale of kings and heroes from the 10th century. The museum has 150 illustrated pages from the Shah-Nameh; one important painting in the set, "The Court of Keyomars," shows a scene of a king and his retinue dressed in turbans and animal-print robes sitting amid a golden-indigo paradise of flowers and trees.

"So much of the artistic output of Islamic art is wild fantasy, not religion," said Mr. Kim during a recent visit to the museum. "That's one of the misconceptions I'd love for the museum to explore."

A few weeks ago, he and the staff were still wearing hard hats. A mosaic Egyptian fountain was being assembled in the main gallery, but the row of nearby display cases remained empty. The action was happening downstairs in storage, where curators and registrars were busy unpacking some of the 85 crates that had recently arrived, each one brimming with art.

Nearby, sitting in a custom Styrofoam case, sat an elephant tusk whose entire surfaces had been carved with intricate floral patterns in the 12th century. Five hundred years after that, a silversmith added silver detailing and a resting stand in the form of a pheasant's foot so the horn could be given as a wedding present to an English nobleman's daughter.

The Aga Khan said his goal for the museum is to chart the far-flung journeys these objects take through time and various cultures and faiths. One of his favorite pieces, now being installed in one of the cases on the main floor, is a Spanish star-mapping instrument called an astrolabe. Its brass surface contains inscriptions in Latin, Arabic and Hebrew—a reminder of the instrument's pluralistic usefulness among 14th-century merchant traders. "I like art that contains symbols," he said, "but this object is a symbol. It says it all."

Write to Kelly Crow at [email protected]

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http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Offering ... story.html

Edmonton Journal

Offerings: Aga Khan Museum enhances Islamic values

By Mansoor Ladha, Edmonton Journal September 5, 2014

The 17-acre site of the new Aga Khan Museum and Ismaili Centre in Toronto

A new and proud chapter in Canadian Ismaili Muslim history is set to unfold in September with the opening of the spectacular Aga Khan Museum and Ismaili Centre in Toronto.

Located in the city’s Don Mills neighbourhood, in addition to two magnificent structures (the Aga Khan Museum and a new Ismaili Muslim community centre prayer hall), the project will include a beautiful park and gardens, created by Lebanese landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic. Fumihiki Maki, an internationally award-winning architect, designed the Aga Khan Museum, while renowned Indian architect Charles Correa designed the Ismaili Centre.

Toronto became the site of the project after plans to locate it in London, England fell apart. The Aga Khan, spiritual leader of the world’s 15 million Ismaili Muslims, has been a great friend of Canada and is expected to attend the opening ceremony.

Toronto’s Ismaili Centre will be the sixth among a growing network of Ismaili centres built around the world. In the last 25 years, equally architecturally spectacular projects have been built in Burnaby (1958), London, England (1985), Lisbon (1998), Dubai (2003) and Dushanbe, Tajikistan (2009). Similar projects are planned for Houston, Paris and Los Angeles. The centres stand majestically as a tribute to the settlement of the Ismaili Muslim community in those countries. Each Ismaili Centre serves both religious and ambassadorial functions with a jamatkhana — a space for prayer and contemplation — and rooms for social gatherings, educational facilities and libraries. As a whole, the centres portray and reflect the values of Islam. During the foundation laying ceremony of the Ismaili Centre, Dushanbe, the Aga Khan said: “These centres serve to reflect, illustrate and represent the community’s intellectual and spiritual understanding of Islam, its social conscience, its organization, its forward outlook and its positive attitude toward the societies in which it lives.”

The Aga Khan Museum, which will reflect the art, culture and performing arts of Islamic civilizations, will house artifacts from the Aga Khan family’s private collections, dating back more than 1,000 years. The museum is aimed at promoting Islamic art through exhibitions, with special emphasis on Shiite Islam, and will provide a forum for exchanges between Islamic and western scholars.

In a speech made at the Musee-Musees Round Table Louvre Museum in October 2007, the Aga Khan explained the reasons for building Aga Khan museums. He said the Muslim world, with its history and culture, is still unknown to the West. Even today, the study of the Muslim world in our high schools and universities is a specialist subject. Very little of the Muslim world features in the study of humanities in the West, where courses are essentially centred around Judeo-Christian civilizations.

“This lack of knowledge is a dramatic reality which manifests itself in a particularly serious way in western democracies, since public opinion has difficulties judging national and international policy vis-à-vis the Muslim world,” he said.

“The two worlds, Muslim and non-Muslim, eastern and western, must as a matter of urgency make a real effort to get to know one another, for I fear that what we have is not a clash of civilizations, but a clash of ignorance on both sides. Insofar as civilizations manifest and express themselves through their art, museums have an essential role to play in teaching the two worlds to understand, respect and appreciate each other,” he said.

The Aga Khan is well-known as a promoter of architecture. He oversees the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, which is aimed at promoting projects around the world with themes of housing, urban infrastructure and historic preservation. The Toronto museum and the centre buildings reflect his high tastes in architecture.

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Aga Khan Museum to open Sept. 18

With a building designed by Fumihiko Maki and artifacts from the Aga Khan’s own collection, it will be one of the best museums of Islamic culture in the world.

By: Murray Whyte Visual arts, Published on Mon Sep 08 2014

The Aga Khan Museum has been more than a dozen years in the making, starting back in 2002 when the Aga Khan Development Network acquired the land and building belonging to the Bata Shoe Company on Wynford Dr.

The Bata HQ was seen by many as a modest modern masterpiece by notable Toronto architect John B. Parkin and its acquisition was met with much protest, as was its demolition. Now, though, with the cool, angular marble walls of the Aga Khan Museum rising above the Don Valley Expressway, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki, misgivings have been replaced by simmering anticipation.

When it opens Sept. 18, the Aga Khan Museum, home to the personal collection of the Aga Khan himself, will be one of the best museums of Islamic culture anywhere in the world with more than 1,000 pieces spanning a millennia.

The spiritual leader of more than 15 million Ismaili Muslims worldwide, the Aga Khan is also a billionaire philanthropist whose public works include cultural endeavours, including exhibitions all over the world. But this is the first permanent bricks-and-mortar expression of that agenda.

The museum will open with two exhibitions, one a display of the collection’s most remarkable artifacts and the other a show of contemporary art from Pakistan, including a large outdoor painting in the museum’s expansive garden by Imran Qureshi. Qureshi made a similarly scaled piece for the rooftop garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York last summer.

Source: http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/vi ... pt_18.html

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http://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/the ... f-toronto/

The Aga Khan Museum: An oasis on the outskirts of Toronto

North America’s first museum for Islamic art is a stunner—and something of an outsider. Given its mission, that’s just fine.

Adrian Lee

September 9, 2014

There’s something inherently urban and urbane about museums, and that’s certainly the case in Toronto. The Royal Ontario Museum, with its stern, Romanesque revival mien juxtaposed with its new crystal addition, divides the red-brick varsity distinction of the University of Toronto on its west from the swish modern Bloor Street shopping strip to its the east. Meanwhile, the ever-evolving Art Gallery of Ontario reflects its place, all modern lines and glass facades designed by Frank Gehry sitting wedged between the up-and-coming Baldwin Village neighbourhood and the clattering bustle of Chinatown. Both those institutions—alongside smaller museums like the Bata Shoe Museum, Casa Loma, Design Exchange, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, the Museum of Inuit Art, et al—are thoroughly central downtown engagements.

So in that way, already, the Aga Khan Museum—set to open on Sept. 18 as North America’s first monument to Islamic art, and founded by its namesake, the founder of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) and imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims—is an outsider. The museum, a gleaming white Brazilian granite crown, is just off the Don Valley Parkway in a suburb eight kilometres outside of the city proper, a good half-hour bus ride from the nearest subway station. Nearby, retirement towers with neat gardens and shiny high-rises stand like obelisks amid a modernist bloc of corporate offices of either sallow taupe or glittering blue.

But that distance, and its distinction from its surroundings, is all part of the museum’s appeal. ”The idea of an oasis—the sense that, once you enter it, you’re in a different place—is very much a part of the overall desire,” said Henry Kim, the museum’s director. He cites Al-Azhar Park in Cairo—another AKDN project—as a place that takes you outside the stresses of the big city. “It’s amazing—suddenly, your day changes from being in the middle of noise and crowds, and suddenly you’re in an open space.”

Toronto was the second choice for the museum’s location—planning permissions squashed plans to build it in London, on a prime downtown plot just outside the Palace of Westminster—but now, the pleasure of this open 6.8-hectare campus is what drives the museum’s sensibility, and the amount of space informs the building’s design by Pritzker prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki, hand-picked by the Aga Khan. With the lush gardens and the five burbling reflective pools outside its front door and its inner-sanctum, open-air courtyard—entered from inside the building and ringed by walls of glass and wooden latticework so that light from outside projects dancing shadows into the museum over the course of the day—it is clear that this is a labour of love.

The museum brought in an all-star team to usher in this unique creation, from Kim, who was responsible for the major redevelopment of the University of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, to Adrien Gardère, an esteemed museologist who has worked at the Louvre in Paris. One section of the permanent exhibit features illustrated pages from the Shah-Nameh, the Persian book of kings and heroes, and includes an isolated “sound shower” reading of its pages. The museum, precisely positioned at 45 degrees solar north so that every surface receives sunlight over the course of the day, boasts a facade that is gridded in exact metre-long blocks of Brazilian granite from top to bottom. Kim says the Aga Khan, an architecture aficionado, was so involved in the process that he himself selected the iridescent granite cubes. Lebanese-Serbian landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic’s public gardens were inspired by the ones in ancient Persia and Spain, right down to his decision to eschew acrylic paints, which would lack the long-term lustre of those historic spaces. They are telltale, loving flourishes befitting the ground-up founding of an entirely new building, devoted to Islamic arts.

“Starting from scratch, tailor-making this to what we want, that’s the real joy,” said Kim. “The challenge, of course, is getting the museum known by people.”

That’s where a tight focus will benefit the museum, and a tight focus it will have: celebrating art from Muslim history, an especially crucial task at a time when news cycles are dominated with war scenes and upheaval in the Middle East. The fact that there aren’t as many museums in Toronto as, say, London, will draw art lovers to the Don Mills suburb, says Kim, and will benefit the main mission: teaching non-Muslims about the oft-hidden nuances of Islam and its rich, diverse history.

The challenge, then, is to accurately reflect Muslim cultures, when there is no single, simple experience. “This is unprecedented. We’ve never had in any country a museum with this diverse a set of populations—Lebanese, Persians, Pakistanis, Egyptians, and more—all living in one city with one institution that represents them all,” said Kim. “There is the tendency among museum curators—and I’ve been guilty of it in the past—of creating exhibitions that are kind of like buffets. You take a little bit from different countries and you add it all together and call it an exhibit about pilgrimage or faith or something. It’s a great way of being cross-cultural, but the problem is it doesn’t focus on one culture over another; it’s being a little bit too fair.”

So instead, a new tactic: the museum will go community by community, starting with Pakistani contemporary art, heading into China then Mughal India then Iran, among others, cycling through these places and cultures every three or four months so that all communities are represented within five years—a hyperactive pace in comparison to the languorous, nearly year-long exhibition rate espoused by most museums. “This will allow them to celebrate what is likely to appeal to specific communities, and really engage.”

Another strategy is to make the collection relevant through the performing arts, with the goal of hosting concerts and festivals showcasing Muslim-Canadian artists, as well as an artist residency program for young Muslims. ”I grew up in Vancouver, and one of the things I would have really loved would be a public space where I could see my own cultural practices reflected, where I could proudly share my heritage with my friends, and find my own identity. That would have been a powerful thing for me,” said Amirali Alibhai, the head of performing arts for the museum. ”Finally—a place where I can take my children or my grandchildren and share something of my cultural heritage with them, and where I can learn something new as well.”

Indeed, while the building is something of a beautiful monolith—all smooth-edged and minimalist—it cannot be a monolith in its core mission: bringing the diversity of Islam and its oft-underseen artwork to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. “In a museum that comes from the Aga Khan Developmental Network—a network that believes in pluralism and peace amongst nations and amongst people—I think our collections reflect that,” said Linda Milrod, the head of exhibitions. ”There’s going to be a lot of people in Toronto who will see themselves in this museum in a way they have not been able to see themselves in other museums before. And that’s going to feel really good.”

So if the museum is something of an outsider, then, well, good: that attitude might just be ideal for the place to succeed in its mission to bring people inside.

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http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/09/09 ... h-america/

Toronto set to unveil first museum of Islamic culture in North America
Republish Reprint

Peter Kuitenbrouwer | September 9, 2014 7:05 PM ET

The Aga Khan Foundation will be opening a new museum, cultural centre and prayer hall on Toronto's Wynford Drive next week.

Peter J. Thompson/National Post

The Aga Khan Foundation will be opening a new museum, cultural centre and prayer hall on Toronto's Wynford Drive next week.


Luis Monreal is a ball of energy who speaks quickly and wields a large vocabulary. Born in Spain to a Catalan mother and a Basque father, he is fluent in French, Spanish, English, German, and (he smiles) “some Arabic.”
Peter J. Thompson/National Post
Peter J. Thompson/National PostA woman walks past art work made by Pakastani artist Aisha Khalid at the soon to be opened Aga Khan Museum.

The man who runs the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Geneva is in Toronto, preparing for the opening of the new Aga Khan Museum.

Lighting technicians, carpenters, curators and cleaners bustle through the galleries, scrambling to get everything finished for a press preview Wednesday. The facility, which opens next week, is the first museum of Islamic art in North America.

Mr. Monreal threads his way to a glass box inside which glows a gold disc the size of a tea saucer.

“Now a major piece in the museum is a very small one,” he said. “This is an astrolabe, made in Spain in the 14th century — probably made in Toledo, Spain, not Toledo, Ohio! The inscription is in Arabic, Hebrew and Latin.”

An astrolabe, he explains, is an astronomical tool, a medieval piece of high technology used for navigation. Not far away sprawls a mamluk, a traditional square fountain of mosaic marble in geometric patterns, made in the 15th century for a home in Cairo.

Then there’s a 12th-century Afghan candlestick “for a very big candle.” Another case displays white ceramic pots with blue glaze. “These are produced in Syria in the 14th century,” said Mr. Monreal.

In a grand hall, workers with a mobile crane have just hung a tapestry pierced in an intricate pattern with 1.2-million pins. The museum commissioned the piece from Aisha Khalid, an artist based in Lahore, Pakistan, who is here supervising the installation.

Syria. Egypt. Afghanistan. Pakistan. These place-names drip with blood in 2014, conjuring images of unrest, protest, bombings and civil war. The Aga Khan Museum, which opens Sept. 18, offers a welcome antidote to these clichés through art that celebrates the rich cultural history of the Islamic world.
Peter J. Thompson/National Post
Peter J. Thompson/National PostA Koran on display at the soon to be opened Aga Khan Museum.

The building’s architect, Fumihiko Maki of Japan, has used geometric patterns inspired by the great mosques of classical Islam, repeating them in the inlaid floor of the courtyard, etched glass, and wood screens in the auditorium.

All this is an intellectual investment by the Swiss-based Aga Khan Development Network, a sprawling non-profit empire, employing 80,000 people in 30 countries, headed by one of the world’s lesser-known royals, Prince Karim Aga Khan, 77. Lesser-known but well-to-do, the 49th Aga Khan lives on an estate called Aiglemont, north of Paris, and owns hundreds of racehorses. He also has private investments; in 2010 Forbes magazine put his personal fortune at US$800-million. He is not a household name in Canada — yet.

Claiming direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad, the Aga Khan is the spiritual leader of an estimated 15 million Ismaili Muslims, thousands of whom came to Canada to escape persecution in East Africa in the 1970s. Today about 100,000 of them call Canada home.

Lately, the Aga Khan has spent time and money in this country. He addressed Parliament in February; recently the government of Canada gave his network $30-million and a 99-year lease on the former Canadian war museum in Ottawa to establish a Global Centre for Pluralism, a joint venture between the Aga Khan’s network and the government. In May, he spoke at the Every Woman Every Child conference in Toronto.
Peter J. Thompson/National Post
Peter J. Thompson/National PostThe Aga Khan Museum's auditorium stairs

About a decade ago, his network bought seven hectares of land north of downtown Toronto from the Bata family. It angered some when it knocked down the Bata Shoe headquarters, a John P. Parkin building that some compared to the Acropolis in Athens.

“It resembled the Acropolis in the sense that it was on a hill,” Mr. Monreal said. “We had a very fruitful dialogue with the architectural gotha of Toronto.” (He uses gotha, a German word, to mean elite or intelligentsia.)

“We said, ‘If you accept that this building goes, we will provide two buildings that will add to the architecture of Toronto.’ “

The Aga Khan’s network kept its promise. The museum shares the site with the Ismaili

Centre Toronto, designed by the Indian architect Charles Correa, which includes a jamatkhama, or Ismaili prayer hall. Between the two buildings spreads a park with five huge reflecting pools, above a parking garage for 600 cars. The investment in the site totals $300-million.

On Friday the Aga Khan visits Toronto to open the museum. It is a welcome addition to the cultural landscape.

National Post

[kassambhai]

Global News in Toronto gets a tour of the museum.
Enjoy the video.

http://globalnews.ca/news/1555084/watch ... an-museum/

[kassambhai]

Aga Khan Museum readies for visit of the man himself
By: Murray Whyte Visual arts, Published on Wed Sep 10 2014

The leaf blowers and sod-edgers roared and sliced in earnest Wednesday morning outside the Aga Khan Museum, the shimmering new hub of Muslim culture perched on a berm of neatly manicured grass alongside the Don Valley Parkway.

Both outside and in, where museum staff busily primped the museum’s galleries, still not quite fully installed, amid clusters of international press being given a first glimpse, a certain urgency reigned. The museum won’t open to the public until Sept. 18, but staff and, indeed, the entire Ismaili Muslim community, had a far more pressing date on their agenda: this Friday, when the museum’s founder and namesake, Prince Karim Al Husseini Aga Khan IV, will arrive to personally and ceremonially declare the museum open.

To draw a comparison that’s still not quite equal, this is a royal visit that, for Anglophiles, would roll Queen Elizabeth, Prince William, Kate Middleton and baby George all into one. The Aga Khan, a 77-year old billionaire living north of Paris, is both the imam, or spiritual leader, of roughly 15 million Ismaili Muslims worldwide (and some 40,000 here in Ontario) and a towering international force for good far beyond his religious role.

Through his agency, the Aga Khan Development Network, he employs 80,000 development workers in some of the most impoverished parts of the world. He runs schools and provides health care not just to Muslim communities, but to people of all faiths in a mission central to his core values: that education and understanding are the only pathways to a civil society.

Which brings us back to the museum, a monument to that mission of cross-fertilization and tolerance of cultural difference. The museum, director and CEO Henry S. Kim said, will help shed light on the fact that the Muslim world is vast, diverse and largely unrepresented in western culture. “The object of the collection is to highlight objects drawn from every era and every region of the Muslim world,” he said. “People need to understand that something lies between East and West, and this is the Muslim world.”
His words were echoed by Luis Monreal who, as the general manager of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, is one of his highness’s chief lieutenants.

“The museum started from a very clear strategic purpose,” he said. “In his highness’s view, education is the vector of development. Our western societies do not know the world of Islam and Muslims.”
So why a museum? “A museum,” he said, “touches an emotional intelligence. Museums can have an educational impact that is direct, different from the cut and dried language of books.”

Whatever its strategic purpose, culturally, this is no token effort. The museum opens publicly next week with a pair of exhibitions: The Garden of Ideas, a show of contemporary artists from Pakistan, and In Search of the Artist, a showcase of the its permanent collection of 1,000-plus pieces spanning 1,400 years of Muslim culture stretching from Spain to Indonesia.

When it opens, this exhibition will showcase why the Aga Khan Museum will instantly become perhaps the most significant hub of Islamic culture in North America. Its collections are among the world’s best. An array of miniature manuscript paintings dating back as far as the 15th century, many of which are to be on display at opening, are perhaps the best to be found anywhere.
And they’re here? Well, of course.

“Canada is the global model for success for diversity and Toronto is the heart of this,” Kim says. “So from my point of view, the best question is, why not?”

Source: http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/vi ... mself.html

[kassambhai]

Toronto CityTV news gets a tour of the museum.
Enjoy the video.

http://www.citynews.ca/2014/09/10/aga-k ... next-week/

[Admin]

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/vi ... mself.html


Aga Khan Museum readies for visit of the man himself

His highness Prince Karim Al Husseini Aga Khan IV set to inaugurate his new museum in Don Mills on Sept. 12

By: Murray Whyte Visual arts, Published on Wed Sep 10 2014

The leaf blowers and sod-edgers roared and sliced in earnest Wednesday morning outside the Aga Khan Museum, the shimmering new hub of Muslim culture perched on a berm of neatly manicured grass alongside the Don Valley Parkway.

Both outside and in, where museum staff busily primped the museum’s galleries, still not quite fully installed, amid clusters of international press being given a first glimpse, a certain urgency reigned. The museum won’t open to the public until Sept. 18, but staff and, indeed, the entire Ismaili Muslim community, had a far more pressing date on their agenda: this Friday, when the museum’s founder and namesake, Prince Karim Al Husseini Aga Khan IV, will arrive to personally and ceremonially declare the museum open.

To draw a comparison that’s still not quite equal, this is a royal visit that, for Anglophiles, would roll Queen Elizabeth, Prince William, Kate Middleton and baby George all into one. The Aga Khan, a 77-year old billionaire living north of Paris, is both the imam, or spiritual leader, of roughly 15 million Ismaili Muslims worldwide (and some 40,000 here in Ontario) and a towering international force for good far beyond his religious role.

Through his agency, the Aga Khan Development Network, he employs 80,000 development workers in some of the most impoverished parts of the world. He runs schools and provides health care not just to Muslim communities, but to people of all faiths in a mission central to his core values: that education and understanding are the only pathways to a civil society.

Which brings us back to the museum, a monument to that mission of cross-fertilization and tolerance of cultural difference. The museum, director and CEO Henry S. Kim said, will help shed light on the fact that the Muslim world is vast, diverse and largely unrepresented in western culture. “The object of the collection is to highlight objects drawn from every era and every region of the Muslim world,” he said. “People need to understand that something lies between East and West, and this is the Muslim world.”

His words were echoed by Luis Monreal who, as the general manager of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, is one of his highness’s chief lieutenants.

The Aga Khan Museum's collection includes 1,000-plus pieces spanning 1,400 years of Muslim culture stretching from Spain to Indonesia.

“The museum started from a very clear strategic purpose,” he said. “In his highness’s view, education is the vector of development. Our western societies do not know the world of Islam and Muslims.”

So why a museum? “A museum,” he said, “touches an emotional intelligence. Museums can have an educational impact that is direct, different from the cut and dried language of books.”

Whatever its strategic purpose, culturally, this is no token effort. The museum opens publicly next week with a pair of exhibitions: The Garden of Ideas, a show of contemporary artists from Pakistan, and In Search of the Artist, a showcase of the its permanent collection of 1,000-plus pieces spanning 1,400 years of Muslim culture stretching from Spain to Indonesia.

When it opens, this exhibition will showcase why the Aga Khan Museum will instantly become perhaps the most significant hub of Islamic culture in North America. Its collections are among the world’s best. An array of miniature manuscript paintings dating back as far as the 15th century, many of which are to be on display at opening, are perhaps the best to be found anywhere.

And they’re here? Well, of course.

“Canada is the global model for success for diversity and Toronto is the heart of this,” Kim says. “So from my point of view, the best question is, why not?”

[Admin]

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commenta ... diqui.html

Thursday, September 11, 2014

12:41 AM EDT

Opinion / Commentary

Aga Khan Museum will prove to be of historic significance: Siddiqui

Aga Khan Museum in Toronto sends a message of peace and pluralism to the world at a time of fraught relations between the West and Muslims.

By: Haroon Siddiqui Columnist, Published on Wed Sep 10 2014

The $300 million Aga Khan Museum on Wynford Dr. — highly visible from the Don Valley Parkway — is more than a stunning architectural and cultural addition to Toronto.

It represents a historic turning point for Canada — sending a bold political and social message of peace and pluralism to the world at a time of fraught relations between the West and Islam/Muslims.

The museum is to be inaugurated on Friday, a day after the 13th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, and amid daily accounts of terrorism and wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and elsewhere. The museum, which opens to the public Sept. 18, offers the beauty and diversity of Islamic cultures and civilizations through the ages.

The museum was planned for London but ran into bureaucratic hurdles. The Aga, spiritual leader of Shiite Ismaili Muslims, could have located it anywhere — in Europe, which is where he lives and works (France and Switzerland) or Africa or Asia (which is where much of his nearly $1 billion development and cultural work is done) or the United States. He chose Canada instead as a tribute to our pluralism and also to make a contribution to it “in the best way possible.”

England’s loss is Canada’s gain.

This is no ordinary museum.
It has not cost Canadian taxpayers a penny.
It is an architectural jewel, inspired by great Islamic structures and taking its inspiration from the Qur’anic theme of light, “God is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth,” light that basks all humans equally, and that lights up the heart and soul, etc.

It uses the familiar geometric patterns of Muslim lands to let in all the light possible. But it has no minarets and no huge domes.

“His Highness did not want this building to use overtly Islamic forms or references,” reveals architect Fumihiko Maki of Japan. “He wanted to have a modern building appropriate to its context.” References to Islam are “sublimated.”

That’s not just an issue of esthetics for the Aga Khan. It is prudent in this age of hysteria against things overtly Islamic. (That may be wise for a minority but it cannot be public policy in a democratic state with equality for all faiths. Such a polity cannot have steeples but ban minarets and temple pillars to bow to the bigotry of the time.)
The museum is the first in the western world dedicated to Islamic arts and objects.

It houses the Aga Khan family collection of about 1,000 rare objects, spanning from the 8th to the 20th century. About 300 will be on display at any given time. Concurrently, there will be two temporary exhibitions showcasing arts from Muslim lands. First up: Contemporary Arts from Pakistan, and one introducing great Muslim artists through the centuries unknown in the West.
The museum aims to “bridge the growing divide of misunderstanding between the East and West,” says the Aga Khan, 77.

It showcases the diversity of Muslims not only by race, language and ethnicity but also by civilizations and theological orientation, such as the majority Sunnis and minority Shiites and sub-sects, and differing interpretations of the Qur’an.
The museum will also hold concerts, movies, festivals, seminars, etc., at its 350-seat auditorium. Many newer Canadians would be able to see themselves in the programs in a way that “I couldn’t see myself growing up in Vancouver,” says Amirali Alibhai, head of performing arts.
New museums must slowly build their reputation but this one comes with one. It brings here what’s already well-known, having been exhibited in Geneva, Parma, London, Paris, Lisbon, Toledo, Berlin and elsewhere.

The project spotlights both the Aga Khan and his Ismaili community, and Canada’s increasing partnership with them.

He is an honorary companion of the Order of Canada as well as an honorary Canadian citizen.

Canada is a partner in many of his initiatives for advancing economic development in some of the poorest parts of the world: building schools and universities; restoring historic Islamic cities, sites and gardens; and advancing architectural excellence (through the prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture and the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard and MIT, Boston).

He runs a mini-United Nations, with its own small diplomatic corps under bilateral agreements with several states. Of his 11 “representatives,” ambassadors, four are Canadian — Nurjehan Mawani, Aziz Bhaloo, Munir Merali and Shams Lakha. A fifth, Firoz Rasul is president of Aga Khan Universities.

The Don Mills project follows the Aga Khan’s Centre for Pluralism, Ottawa, designed to distil Canada’s multicultural wisdom and export it to the world. (It will be shifted to the Canadian War Museum, which he is restoring.) Ottawa is also the locale of an Aga Khan “delegation,” i.e. embassy.

There are about 12 million Ismailis, including about 90,000 in Canada. They are a cohesive unit — prudent, modest and obedient to him (in sharp contrast to most Muslims who revel in their bombast and democratic chaos). The Ismailis are one of the most successful examples of integration into Canada, in no small measure due to the Aga Khan, who guides them both spiritually and in worldly matters.

Haroon Siddiqui’s column appears on Thursday and Sunday.

[email protected]

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http://www.geo.tv/article-159388-North- ... in-Toronto

North America´s first Islamic art museum to open in Toronto

Posted: September 11, 2014 - 452 PKT

TORONTO: A shiny new Islamic art museum and cultural center will open in Toronto next week, becoming the first of its kind in North America.

Bankrolled by Prince Karim Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims, the facility will feature more than 1,000 artifacts -- including rare scriptures of the Quran from the 7th and 8th centuries.

There are fine collections of Islamic art in museums throughout Canada and the United States, but this will be the first devoted entirely to such works when it welcomes visitors as of September 18.

The Can$300 million (US$274 million) Aga Khan Museum and adjacent Ismaili Center are sprawled over 6.8 hectares (17 acres), hoping to cater to Muslims and others

AFP |

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http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles ... nada/35472

Thursday 11 Sep 2014

Aga Khan’s gift to Canada

Riches of Islamic art and science to be unveiled in Toronto’s new cultural complex

By Julia Halperin. Museums, Issue 260, September 2014

Published online: 10 September 2014

Eight years in the making, the 113,000 sq. ft Aga Khan Museum seeks to increase knowledge and understanding of Muslim civilisations through the arts of the Islamic world

The first museum in North America devoted to Islamic arts and culture is due to open on 18 September in an unlikely place: the Don Mills suburb of Toronto, Canada. The Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslim community, philanthropist and chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network, is the founder of the C$300m ($275m) complex, which also includes a community centre and gardens covering 753,473 sq. ft.

Eight years in the making, the 113,000 sq. ft Aga Khan Museum seeks to increase knowledge and understanding of Muslim civilisations through the arts of the Islamic world. The more than 1,000-strong collection, which includes illuminated manuscripts, ceramics, textiles, paintings, scientific texts and musical instruments, spans 11 centuries and is drawn from the personal holdings of the Aga Khan and his family.

Cultural diplomacy

In keeping with the Aga Khan’s role as an international ambassador for Islam, the museum is as much an exercise in cultural diplomacy as an educational and scholarly endeavour. Objects underscore the Islamic world’s oft-overlooked history of cultural exchange. A brass astrolabe from 14th-century Spain, for example, contains inscriptions in Arabic, Hebrew and Latin, demonstrating how Christian, Muslim and Jewish astronomers used the instrument at different times.

The museum is also developing an exhibition about the Belitung shipwreck, the oldest Arab ship found in Asian waters. Regarded as one of the most significant archaeological finds of the 20th century, the ninth-century ship’s cargo included silver ingots, bronze vessels and 60,000 glazed ceramics. “We want to be able to highlight the fact that even in early times, there were constant trade relations between the Muslim world and the outside world,” says Henry Kim, the museum’s director.

The museum’s architecture refers to this cross-cultural influence. The Aga Khan asked the Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki to base his design on the concept of light, a central premise of Islamic architecture. The result is a luminous white limestone building that blends Japanese and Islamic traditions. Intricate window designs refer to mashrabiya (Islamic latticework) and Japanese bronze lanterns.

The Aga Khan decided to build the museum in Toronto after an unsuccessful bid in 2002 for a site in central London on the Thames. He has a strong relationship with Canada, which is home to around 100,000 Ismaili Muslims, funding other major projects there. A friend of the late Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau, the Aga Khan has called the country “the most successful pluralist society on the face of our globe”.

Broader agenda

The museum is just one part of the Aga Khan’s broader cultural agenda. He sponsors a triennial award for architecture and a joint programme for the study of Islamic art and architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also finances the conservation of endangered Muslim sites around the world, most recently in Syria, while he has funnelled millions of euros into the restoration of the Château de Chantilly, a historic French castle owned by the Institut de France, which is near his own Aiglemont estate.

Despite the Aga Khan’s deep pockets—in 2008 Forbes estimated that his personal wealth exceeded $1bn—the museum hopes to become financially self-sufficient within five years, Kim says. A combination of donations, sponsorships, memberships and ticket sales are expected to fund its estimated annual operating budget of around C$15m ($13.8m) along with further acquisitions.

The museum also intends to collect contemporary Islamic art. One inaugural exhibition, “The Garden of Ideas: Contemporary Art from Pakistan” (20 September-18 January 2015), presents new work by six artists. Imran Qureshi, who recently painted the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is due to create a site-specific work in the museum’s gardens.

Musicians due to perform in the first year include Wu Man, the award-winning player of the ancient Chinese instrument the pipa. “Everyone learns about Western art and the arts of China and Japan,” Kim says. “We are trying to show what happens between East and West. What lies between is Islamic art.”

[Admin]

http://globalnews.ca/news/1555084/watch ... an-museum/

September 10, 2014 9:23 am

WATCH: Inside look at Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum

By Staff Global News

WATCH ABOVE: The Aga Khan Museum lets Global News take an advance tour before opening later in the month

TORONTO – The Aga Khan Museum is one of a kind in North America and Global News has your first look inside the walls of Toronto’s newest attraction.

The museum is dedicated to Islamic art but it also holds an Ismaili centre for reflection, spirituality, and engagement.

“When the question of where to set up the museum came about, I think Toronto was identified as a place where the ideas of the museum would resonate the best,” said Aga Khan Museum Director & CEO Henry Kim.

It has taken four years since ground was broken for the museum to be ready to host Toronto with the doors now officially opening Sept. 18.

“This is a museum of the art of the Muslim world. But what it’s here for is to show people the connections across time and across cultures,” said Kim.

Designed by architect Fumihiko Maki, the entire building is considered a work of art which plays with shadows and natural light throughout the day.

The museum that bears his name is an initiative of His Highness the Aga Khan — spiritual leader to the world’s Ismaili Muslim community.

“His highness takes a very passionate interest in architecture. So this building is part of the excellence in architecture. He’s been involved in it for the last 50 years,” said Amirali Alibhai, head of performing arts at the Aga Khan Museum.

With a files from Zaffrin Pira

© Shaw Media, 2014

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http://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/aga ... -1.2002587

Aga Khan Museum of Islamic art to open Friday in Toronto

Aga Khan museum in Toronto

The Canadian Press
Published Thursday, September 11, 2014 2:28PM EDT

Last Updated Thursday, September 11, 2014 10:57PM EDT

TORONTO -- A $300-million showcase complex that includes the first North American museum devoted to Islamic art opens Friday, an initiative of the Aga Khan, spiritual leader of the world's Ismaili Muslims.

The complex, designed by some of the world's top architects, aims to foster knowledge and understanding among Muslims as well as between Islamic societies and other cultures.

Located on 6.8-hectares, the museum building with its open-air, glassed-in courtyard is linked via a landscaped park featuring five granite reflecting pools to a cultural religious centre dominated by a towering glass roof over its prayer hall.
Photos

Aga Khan Museum of Islamic art

Ruba Kana'an, head of education and scholarly programs, looks at some of the artifacts on display at the new Aga Khan museum in Toronto on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014. (Colin Perkel / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
Aga Khan Museum of Islamic art in Toronto

Some of the artifacts on display at the new Aga Khan museum in Toronto are pictured on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014. (Colin Perkel / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

"You can see that the play of light throughout the building has different nuances and just creates an incredible ambience," said Farid Damji, a volunteer with the Aga Khan Council for Canada.

The Aga Khan, the community's 49th hereditary imam, is also a wealthy philanthropist who, along with members of the faith, bankrolled the new complex.

Despite the close association with Ismailism -- part of the Shia branch of Islam -- the museum intends to reflect the diversity of cultural expressions within Islam, Damji said as workers put the final touches to the interior and exterior elements this week.

"It's not an Ismaili museum," he said.

"It's a museum of Islam and Muslim civilization, so it's really meant to display that diversity."

Designed by award-winning Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, the museum building has at its centre a "courtyard of light," with heated floor tiles to help snow drain, and a 350-seat auditorium.

The exhibition space itself contains more than one-thousand objects and pieces of art -- manuscripts, drawings, paintings, tapestries, metalwork, ceramics -- from the 8th to 19th centuries.

In the centre of one display area sits a 16th-century fountain made of marble and sandstone in geometric formations that would have been in the reception hall of a palatial residence in Cairo. Nearby, a large 12th century copper candlestick from eastern Iran fills a display case.

Ruba Kana'an, a historian of Islamic art and head of education at the museum, called the collection special.

"It's a significant collection of the art of Muslim societies from different parts of the world," Kana'an said. "It has a variety of masterpieces -- works that are unique in either their beauty or their historical significance."

Paris-based museologist Adrien Gardere designed the interior of the museum and the multimedia elements that are part of the permanent and temporary displays.

The pieces are not meant to be seen in isolation, he said in an interview, adding that the days of a single artifact floating in space in a beam of light are over.

"The world of artifacts is a world of connection and dialogue," Gardere said. "We're in a place where the artifacts dialogue in a transversal way."

The Ismaili Centre is part of a global network of such facilities, including one in Vancouver.

The latest addition to the network -- the handiwork of renowned Indian architect Charles Correa -- features a lounge, library, classrooms and administrative offices as well as the prayer centre with its glass roof and its Arabic-calligraphy reflective wood.

The Swiss-born Aga Khan, an honorary Canadian Citizen, is slated to be on hand for Friday's official opening of the complex.

About 100,000 Ismailis, part of an estimated 15-million strong community in 30 countries, live in Canada.

Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/aga ... z3D2a1nktD

[Admin]

Links as received:

1) Videographer Audra Brown takes a tour of the Aga Khan Museum, a new building in Toronto celebrating Islamic art and culture.

http://www.citynews.ca/2014/09/10/aga-k ... next-week/


2. Global News video :A sneak peak at the AGA Khan museum in Toronto -

http://ow.ly/Bj74O



3. NATIONAL POST: Toronto set to unveil first museum of Islamic culture in North America

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/09/09 ... h-america/



4. Toronto Star: Aga Khan Museum readies for visit of the man himself

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/vi ... mself.html



5. MACLEANS

http://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/the ... f-toronto/


Pictures taken at Sunrise & sunset


http://salimnensi.pixieset.com/sunrisew ... ighlights/

http://salimnensi.pixieset.com/sunsetswynforddrive



http://salimnensi.pixieset.com/sunrisew ... retoronto/

[Admin]

WEBCAST: Opening ceremonies of the Ismaili Centre Toronto and Aga Khan Museum

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and His Highness the Aga Khan will officially open the Ismaili Centre Toronto and Aga Khan Museum today. The ceremonies will begin at the Ismaili Centre and conclude at the Museum. In honour of this occasion, a live webcast of the ceremonies will be streamed here:


https://www.agakhanmuseum.org/about/inauguration

This webcast will take place on Friday, September 12, 2014 soon after 2:00 PM Toronto time (GMT-4).

[Admin]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/nat ... e20591864/


New Aga Khan museum and Ismaili complex opens in Toronto

TORONTO — The Canadian Press

Published Friday, Sep. 12 2014, 7:35 PM EDT

Last updated Friday, Sep. 12 2014, 7:37 PM EDT

The first museum in North America devoted to Islamic art will help promote an understanding of a religion that is based on tolerance and pluralism, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday at the new landmark’s opening ceremony.

The Aga Khan — spiritual leader of the Ismaili community — joined Harper in Toronto to celebrate the opening of his namesake museum, the $300-million Aga Khan Museum and Ismaili Centre.
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The first North American museum dedicated to Islamic art opens in Toronto this Friday, bankrolled in part by the Aga Khan, the Ismaili Muslim spiritual leader. An art historian says the building houses a number of masterpieces.


Building on faith: Inside Toronto’s new Aga Khan Museum, designed by the world’s leading architects

“We celebrate today, then, not only the harmonious meeting of green gardens and glass galleries, or of Italian marble and Canadian maple. We rejoice above all in the special spirit which fills this place and gives it its soul,” Harper said.

“For a very, very long time this priceless gift will bring joy to the eyes and jubilation to the hearts of countless visitors.”

The Aga Khan, an honorary Canadian citizen, thanked the prime minister and the Canadian government, saying the country has been a significant partner for the Ismaili community and the Aga Khan Development Network.

He said it was a joy to celebrate the spirit of friendship at a time when so much of the world’s attention is focused on a climate of belligerence.

“These spaces will be filled with sounds of enrichment, dialogue and warm human rapport, as Ismailis and non-Ismailis share their lives in a healthy, gregarious spirit,” he said.

Harper praised the spiritual leader’s role in “demystifying Islam...by stressing its social traditions of peace, of tolerance and of pluralism.”

On display in the museum will be more than 1,000 artifacts from the 8th through 19th centuries sourced from various countries.

Renowned architects from Japan and India designed the main buildings, while a Lebanese architect designed the landscaped park that links them on the 6.8-hectare site. All three were present at Friday’s opening ceremony.

Federal and provincial political leaders, including Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, were also present.

The museum, which opens to the public Sept. 18, joins a network of Ismaili centres in Vancouver, London, Lisbon, Dubai and Dushanbe.

About 100,000 Ismailis, part of an estimated 15-million strong community in 30 countries, live in Canada.

[Admin]

http://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2014/09/12/pm- ... han-museum

Toronto, Ontario
12 September 2014

Introduction

Prime Minister Stephen Harper today joined His Highness the Aga Khan in the official opening of the Ismaili Centre and the Aga Khan Museum, situated in the Don Mills area of Toronto, Ontario. He was joined by Shelly Glover, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages.

While at the Ismaili Centre, the Prime Minister toured the complex which incorporates spaces for social and cultural gatherings, intellectual engagement and reflection, as well as spiritual contemplation.

He then visited the Aga Khan Museum, which also held its inaugural ceremony on the same day. The Museum’s collection, which includes art and artefacts from the permanent collection of His Highness the Aga Khan and members of his family, is dedicated to presenting an overview of the artistic, intellectual and scientific contributions that Muslim civilizations have made to world heritage.

Across Canada, Canadian Ismailis joined together at mosques and gathering places to watch a livestream of the events with their communities.

Quick Facts

His Highness the Aga Khan is the 49th hereditary Imam (spiritual leader) of the world's 15 million Shia Ismaili Muslims.
There are more than 100,000 Shia Ismaili Muslims in Canada.
Since taking on his role as Imam in 1957, His Highness the Aga Khan has been deeply engaged in improving the quality of life of the most vulnerable populations, while emphasizing the need to uphold human dignity as well as respect for tolerance and pluralism.
The first Canadian Ismaili Centre was opened in Burnaby, British Columbia, in 1985.
There are currently six Ismaili Centres globally, including the Centre in Toronto. The network of Ismaili Centres reflects and illustrates, through design and function, the Ismaili community’s intellectual and spiritual understanding of Islam, its social conscience and its tolerant attitude.
His Highness the Aga Khan was formally granted honorary citizenship in May 2010 during an official visit to Canada. During that visit, Prime Minister Harper and His Highness took part in the Foundation Ceremony of the Ismaili Centre, Aga Khan Museum and Park.
The Museum is the first in North America dedicated exclusively to the arts and artefacts of the Islamic world.
On February 27, 2014, His Highness the Aga Khan became the first faith leader to address the Joint Session of Canada’s Parliament.
Our longstanding development partnership was evidenced this past May, as the Aga Khan attended Prime Minister Harper’s Saving Every Woman Every Child Summit, where His Highness made a keynote address.

Quotes

“It is once more an honour to welcome His Highness the Aga Khan to Canada. Our country has a deep and longstanding partnership with the Imamat, as evidenced by his decision to establish the Ismaili Centre and the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto. This partnership stems from our shared commitment to pluralism, civil society, human dignity, and peace and understanding.” – Prime Minister Stephen Harper

“I encourage Canadians from coast to coast to coast as well as international visitors to tour these architectural marvels. I am certain that the Centre and Museum will help to promote spirituality and deepen religious and cultural understanding and respect in Canada.” – Prime Minister Stephen Harper
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