Marilyn Jenkins-Madina

The remarkable journey of one of the first women to become a curator of Islamic art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and an internationally recognized scholar in the field. As a girl growing up in Frenchtown, New Jersey, Marilyn Jenkins-Madina recalls first learning about the Egyptian pyramids in sixth grade. That discovery opened her mind to the possibility of not only learning more about worlds far removed from her small-town existence, but of actually experiencing them and living them. Throughout her life, opportunities to follow uncharted roads have presented themselves in ways that she has not dismissed. It has been the driving force in her career and her life. She became a curator of Islamic art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and an internationally recognized scholar in the field. She took more than 50 international trips, most of which were to the Middle East, at times and in locations where women were not exactly respected or welcomed in a capacity of authority. She came to enjoy an enduring friendship with Kuwaiti royalty. And, last but certainly not least, she became the wife and partner-in-adventure of a wonderful gentleman from Damascus who was a professor at Columbia University and also a Kurdish agha. From the banks of the Delaware to the shores of the Arabian Gulf and beyond, The Lure of the East: A Curator's Fascinating Journey is the story of her remarkable journey. Dr. Jenkins-Madina began her long curatorial career at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 1964. Having received her B. A. from Brown University in 1962, she continued to pursue her education while working at The Metropolitan Museum, earning both her M. A. and Ph. D. during this time. From her initial appointment as Curatorial Assistant, she rose through the ranks during her forty-year tenure as curator in the Department of Islamic Art and was named Curator Emerita upon her retirement in 2004. This memoir is meant to inspire others to dare to take their own road less traveled.

This richly illustrated book provides an unsurpassed overview of Islamic art and architecture from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries, a time of the formation of a new artistic culture and its first, medieval, flowering in the vast area from the Atlantic to India. Inspired by Ettinghausen and Grabar’s original text, this book has been completely rewritten and updated to take into account recent information and methodological advances. The volume focuses special attention on the development of numerous regional centers of art in Spain, North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, Iraq, and Yemen, as well as the western and northeastern provinces of Iran. It traces the cultural and artistic evolution of such centers in the seminal early Islamic period and examines the wealth of different ways of creating a beautiful environment. The book approaches the arts with new classifications of architecture and architectural decoration, the art of the object, and the art of the book. With many new illustrations, often in color, this volume broadens the picture of Islamic artistic production and discusses objects in a wide range of media, including textiles, ceramics, metal, and wood. The book incorporates extensive accounts of the cultural contexts of the arts and defines the originality of each period. A final chapter explores the impact of Islamic art on the creativity of non-Muslims within the Islamic realm and in areas surrounding the Muslim world.