The objects mentioned below include Arabic and Persian manuscripts in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.
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Dr Geoffrey Roper
Bibliographical & Editorial Consultant
(Middle Eastern & Muslim areas & languages)
Leith, St Mark's Hill, Surbiton
London, KT6 4LW, Great Britain
[log in to unmask] +44 (0) 20 8390 0497
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ebba Koch <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 5 July 2012
Dear colleagues,
Viennese museums possess outstanding works of art from the Islamic world in their collections. However, the general public is not aware of them, and many objects are not even known to scholars in the field. Most of Vienna's Islamic art is kept in storage and the few objects which are on display are presented with hardly any indication of their historical, regional or artistic context.
The Virtual Museum offers a solution. It allows us to digitally assemble works of art from collections with different orientations and agendas and to bring them together in a new and meaningful context.
I undertook a first step into this direction with the students who attended my seminar "Ein virtuelles Museum islamischer Kunst in Wien" (" A Virtual Museum of Islamic Art in Vienna") of the Institute of Art History, at Vienna University, held in the autumn terms of 2005/06 and 2006/07. We selected outstanding Islamic objects or group of objects from various Viennese collections and viewed and discussed them in situ in a dialogue with their curators. Most of them welcomed our project wholeheartedly. We analysed the historical and art-historical relevance of the art works, studied their regional significance, tried to establish their origin and attempted to find out how they reached Vienna. We were lucky to have a talented web designer among the participants of our seminar, and it is due to her largely voluntary efforts that all this information can now be accessed at
http://museumislamischerkunst.net
I did not bring the virtual museum to your notice so far because there were plans to translate the website into English which would have made it more accessible. Since the English translation did not work out I send you the link to the German website. The virtual museum can be accessed according to collections ("Museen") and according to the dates of the objects ("Zeitstreifen").
I hope you will find it useful.
Best wishes,
Ebba Koch
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