Private sponsor supports the Museum of Islamic Art's digitisation project as part of the planned "Islamic Art Online" portal
Press release from 01/30/2012
The National Museums in Berlin of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the art patron Yousef Jameel recently signed a contract to finance the digitisation, cataloguing and virtual preparation of large parts of the Museum of Islamic Art's collection.
The generous funding from Yousef Jameel will enable the Museum of Islamic Art to set up six temporary positions for the duration of the five-year project and to finance other tasks associated with the project. The aim is to digitise 11,000 objects of Islamic art and culture from the museum's collection and make them virtually accessible to an international public via the planned "Islamic Art Online" portal. Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, emphasises: "This project is groundbreaking for the SPK in its efforts to digitise large parts of the holdings of its museums, libraries and archives over the next few years and make them accessible to a global public. The generous commitment of a private sponsor is also exemplary for the implementation of such digitisation projects. Yousef Jameel said: "Knowledge should be accessible - to anyone, anytime, anywhere. "Islamic Art Online" will be an essential step towards this goal."
The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford is coordinating the project. The museum has extensive knowledge of such a complex digitisation project thanks to the digitisation and virtual preparation of its holdings in the "Eastern Art Online" portal since 2007. "Eastern Art Online" is also sponsored by Yousef Jameel and is to be expanded into the "Islamic Art Online" platform by incorporating the collections of other internationally renowned museums of Islamic art and culture. The Berlin Museum of Islamic Art is making a start here; further collaborations are planned. The digitised material from the Museum of Islamic Art will also be fed into the cross-foundation database "SPK Digital" and will then be available here and in the German Digital Library.
The Museum of Islamic Art currently only presents around 430 objects from its extensive collection of Islamic art and culture from the 8th to 19th centuries in its permanent exhibition in the south wing of the Pergamonmuseum, including such famous objects as the Mshatta Facade and the Aleppo Room. In addition, there are 60 objects from Edmund de Unger's collection of Islamic art, known internationally as the "Keir Collection", which are on loan to the Museum of Islamic Art. Only after the renovation of the Pergamonmuseum, which will begin in 2013, and the subsequent relocation of the Museum of Islamic Art to the north wing of the Pergamonmuseum will a larger part of the museum's holdings be accessible to visitors.
Yousef Jameel (Hon. LHD) is a Fellow at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford and received an honorary doctorate in the humanities. He runs a group of companies and is also a private patron of education, research and the arts. Since 2004, he has supported over 300 students and doctoral candidates as well as several cultural projects.