The Keir Collection of Islamic Art

The Keir Collection Gallery presents a selection of masterworks from the Keir Collection of Islamic Art, a private collection of Islamic art currently on long-term loan to the Dallas Museum of Art. The gallery is regularly reinstalled with new, special exhibitions of manuscripts, paintings, and textiles.

Starting June 29, see a new exhibition of works from the 18th and 19th centuries, offering a view into artistic practices and production in Iran, India, and the Ottoman Turkish lands in the beginning of the modern era. The selected works show evidence of continuities as well as new inspirations, iconographies, and techniques such as photography. Also newly on view is an immersive analysis of one of the masterpieces in the Keir Collection, a tinted drawing illustrating a story from the anthology The Gulistan (Rose Garden) of Sa‘di by Riza-yi ‘Abbasi, one of Iran’s great 16th-century artists. This episode, “On the advantages of silence”, is a layered, ironic tale that warns against seeking profit from thieves. A large graphic indicates how to read each of the elements of the drawing in relation to the story.