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[TEXT: The Metropolitan Museum of Art: New Galleries for the Art of
the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia]
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[TEXT: Haroon Moghul, Associate Editor, Religion Dispatches]
How do we get people in the Muslim community excited about
their heritage, learning about their history, and
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seeing the Met as a resource that belongs to them just as much as it
belongs to anyone else?
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People will assume that a museum is for certain types of people,
certain audiences, certain income brackets.
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So these are populations that may not be comfortable coming to
a museum or may not even know that this exists.
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[TEXT: Maryam Ekhtiar, Senior Research Associate, Department of Islamic Art]
We really made a great effort to bring in these people and for
them to be aware of our galleries
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so that when they open, their communities can come and enjoy and
learn in these galleries.
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[TEXT: Hussein Rashid, Adjunct Professor, Hofstra University]
They’ve done amazing outreach to the local New York Muslim
community,
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they’ve done amazing outreach to non-Muslim communities,
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and making sure that this isn’t just a gallery by Muslims for
Muslims
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but that this is really about art and the values that art speak to.
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[Haroon Moghul:] History and art have a way of giving
people a sense of grounding,
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a sense of pride in their origins, in their background, in their
cultural achievements.
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When people see this stuff and they look around, they say, wow,
this is something that people from
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my cultural universe did and contributed and made, and all of
these people are here putting money into, coming to see it
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really says to people that you have a place here, you have something
to be proud of.
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Islamic history is part of global history and therefore part
of American history.
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Getting people to understand that, I think, will give them a very
different perspective on being Muslim in the United States.
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[TEXT: metmuseum.org/newgalleries2011]
Produced by the U.S. Department of State]