From the Louvre: Masterpieces of Islamic Art will bring 26 celebrated works from Paris to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, opening September 26 and running through January 18, 2027. The exhibition gathers objects dating from the 7th to the 19th century, created across regions from Spain to India. It is the first time these 26 pieces will be presented together in the United States, according to the museum.
From the Louvre: Masterpieces of Islamic Art spans centuries and regions
Co-curated by Simon Rettig of the National Museum of Asian Art and Souraya Noujaim of the Louvre, the show highlights a wide array of materials, including bronze, wood, and ceramics. Visitors will see the 14th-century Syro-Egyptian Baptistery of Saint Louis basin and a circa 1700 Mughal dagger made of Damascus steel with gold inlay and a horse head handle. Rettig described the basin as being in exceptional condition.
Rettig noted that many works acquire the status of masterpiece over time, shaped by public reception and museum audiences.
Histories and identities of iconic objects
While the full provenance of several works remains incomplete, the exhibition invites visitors to consider the journeys these objects took before reaching the gallery. The Saint Louis basin, for instance, was associated with King Louis IX and used in French royal baptisms, despite the monarch living more than a century before the basin was created. According to Rettig, the vessel was given a forged French identity in the 18th century, and only in the 20th century were its Islamic origins broadly recognized.
He said the story illustrates that history is not linear and that objects can embody multiple identities.
A longstanding link between Washington and Paris
The National Museum of Asian Art traces its relationship with the Louvre to its founder, Charles Lang Freer, who befriended French curator Gaston Migeon. Freer attended a landmark Islamic art exhibition in Paris in 1903, an experience Rettig said spurred Freer to collect Islamic art.
Freer donated his collection to the nation in 1906, and the Freer Gallery of Art, now part of the National Museum of Asian Art, opened to the public in 1923. The museum has exhibited Islamic art since its opening, and Rettig said the pieces on view today each tell their own stories.
Seeing the loans from Paris together, he added, offers visitors a chance to consider what qualities elevate an artwork to the status of masterpiece. Similar questions about how institutions shape the meaning of objects have surfaced in cases such as the Messina museum heist.
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