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PROVO -- A major new art exhibit is currently undergoing installation at the BYU Museum of Art is expected to attract 100,000 visitors and will feature art from the world of Islam. KSL was able to get an exclusive first look. The "Beauty and Belief" exhibit is expected to attract 100-thousand visitors. Works will travel to four museums in America, but they make their first stop in Provo.
Visitors will enter the rich world of Islamic art through a spectacular, purple arch. Each room they enter will have a different colors, signifying different ideas - like light, which leads to knowledge.
The exhibit team is mounting 250 works of art. A pair of 19th century mother-of-pearl doors from India were donated by the Doris Duke Foundation in Hawaii. A heavy, jewel-encrusted box from the Mughal Empire in India will grace the same room as an earthenware bowl from 12th century Iran.
The exhibit stretches over 16-thousand square feet, and the design itself incorporates many layers of meaning.
"All these arches are creating a sense of the infinite," said Exhibit Director Sabiha al Khemir. "That's conveying an experience to the visitor,"
Dozens on campus are supporting the exhibit's curators.
"The design, the actual build of the gallery, and then working on the shipping, the insurance, and just the logistics of getting the objects here," said Emily Poulsen, senior registrar at the museum. "So it's really exciting."
This exhibit, they say, will be a rare opportunity to experience different cultures and another faith.
"If you feel somewhere else, you are in somebody else's world and you feel wonderful," al Khemir said. "I mean, it's the best way for acceptance and embracing something different."
Dr. al Khemir says building bridges of understanding starts with the realization that God is at the center of all beauty.
