Historians of Islamic Arts Association, Third Biennial Symposium : Looking Widely, Looking Closely, October 18-20, 2012, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
A glimpse at the most commonly used survey books of Islamic art and architecture is revealing: none of them devote any attention to Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country. Likewise, exhibitions of Islamic art in museums, with very few exceptions, stop at the borders of South Asia. The exclusion of Indonesia from the field of Islamic art can be traced back to the late 19th century when Western art historians and museums started to study the artefacts they collected from Muslim regions, and Islamic art as a field of enquiry emerged.