Linda Komaroff, long-time curator of the Art of the Middle East at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), has pioneered in the study and exhibition of Islamic art to include contemporary works. Her interests have long focused on the arts of Iran. With this volume her friends and colleagues celebrate her broad scope with essays exploring many new areas. These 13 essays examine different media, including architecture, manuscripts, portable arts and textiles, as well as the contemporary arts of painting, photography, printmaking and video, from the early Islamic period to the present. In addition to traditional approaches to art-historical scholarship, such as textual analysis, connoisseurship, design, technical and material analysis, and archaeology, the contributors take on such newer themes as gift giving, the diaspora of Iranian art, political art, the relationship of the present to the past or vice versa, and the connections between Iranian art and the arts of the West. Some essays also deal with music and dance.
