It’s hard to imagine a more universally loved and celebrated topic than food and dining. We live in an era of celebrity chefs, reality baking shows, and social-media food pics. But a love of food and dining isn’t new, as The Art of Dining: Food Culture in the Islamic World demonstrates. And the significance of what we eat and with whom, and our rituals surrounding dining, are themes that span all cultures, places, and eras.  

With 230 beautiful objects drawn from the vast regions known as the Islamic world, The Art of Dining celebrates elegant dining and a love of food, and their shared ties to culture in the regions showcased, and around the world.  

Originally organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Art of Dining: Food Culture in the Islamic World is on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts from Sept. 22, 2024, through Jan. 5, 2025. Here, the show’s DIA curator, Katherine Kasdorf, Associate Curator, Arts of Asia and the Islamic World, talks about why this show is important in the here and now. 

This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and curated by Linda Komaroff, Curator of Islamic Art and Department Head of Art of the Middle East there. She devoted many years of research to the project and put together an amazing exhibition and catalog with contributions by leading scholars of art and culinary histories of the Islamic world. 

When we say “Islamic world,” by the way, we mean regions where Islam holds significant cultural and historical importance. Historically, these regions were part of many empires and kingdoms governed by Muslim people, with geographical borders shirting over time. The Islamic world encompasses a vast geographical area including the Middle East and North Africa, Iran and Central Asia, parts of South and Southeast Asia, parts of Spain, and more. These regions have always been home to many cultures, languages, and religions. So in this context, “Islamic” is more a cultural term than a religious term.  

There are many reasons this exhibition is a good fit for the DIA. Besides the merits of the show itself, Metro Detroit is home to a lot of people who have a personal connection to one or more of the regions or cultural traditions at the center of the show. The Arab American community is one of the largest in the country. There are also Bangladeshi, Iranian, Turkish, Indian, Pakistani, and many other communities who might find a connection to the exhibition. Of course, many people love Islamic art who might not identify with one of these regions in terms of their personal heritage, and we hope the show will also attract those who may not have a prior interest in Islamic art. But we like to present exhibitions that reflect our communities, and aside from our gallery of Islamic art, which visitors can see any time, it has been a long time since the museum has presented an exhibition focused on art of the Islamic world. We think this show is the perfect opportunity to do that, and I’m really grateful to DIA leadership for seeing that. 

I think anyone who sees the exhibition in both venues will notice right away that we’re doing a different kind of installation. At LACMA, they took a more pared-back approach, presenting the objects against white walls with minimal labels. Here, we’ve painted the gallery walls a dark blue, with gold accents inspired by Islamic architecture and geometric shapes found in some of the exhibition’s paintings. I think it sets off the objects beautifully. Also, for the DIA, my colleague, Interpretive Planner Megan DiRienzo, and I have written a robust array of labels, including some multipage illustrated labels to delve deeper into some of the more complex works or playful groupings. We don’t expect any one visitor to read all the labels, but if someone wants to know more about a work, we don’t want them to be disappointed.  

The show’s title is another difference. At LACMA, it was called Dining with the Sultan: The Fine Art of Feasting. But after doing an online survey in November and December, as well as interviews in our galleries with visitors, in-depth phone interviews with community members, and a town hall meeting at the Arab American National Museum (which our colleagues there generously helped organize), we took all that feedback from community members and landed on our title: The Art of Dining: Food Culture in the Islamic World. We hope this title speaks to the show’s broadly relatable themes — the enjoyment of food and dining — while also conveying the centrality of Islamic art to the exhibition. 

The feedback from our community engagement activities also informed the exhibition’s labels. In some instances, people asked questions that Megan and I wanted to be sure to address, and in other instances people brought up really nice points that we wanted to work into the text. And, I should add, credit for conducting the survey and interviews goes to my colleagues in the department of Evaluation and Research: Ken Morris, Erin Wilcox, and Caitlin Santer. 

Continuing our commitment to community partnerships, the DIA is collaborating with several organizations, businesses, and community leaders to host free public programming, educator workshops, and more. So although the exhibition was organized by LACMA, here at the DIA we’ve really made it our own. 

I was excited about this exhibition the moment I heard about it, even before LACMA approached the DIA about being a venue for the show. The objects are absolutely outstanding, and food is a broadly popular and relatable theme. Everyone eats! And many people are interested in gourmet cultures where the presentation of food is as important as the taste.  

Most of the objects in the show would have belonged to wealthy people, and many were made for members of the ruling elite, but just like us, they used bowls, platters, spoons, and cups, and they enjoyed coming together with friends and family for a meal. Some of the exhibition’s labels invite people to imagine what a bowl or platter might have looked like when filled with saffron rice, for instance, or what it would have felt like to hold a glass with decorative ridges on its surface. The show invites us to make lots of multisensory connections — there are even scent boxes in some of the galleries that relate to objects displayed nearby. One is for coffee, in a section about coffee culture, and the other two are floral scents that might have filled the air of a dining space. In the historical Islamic world, pleasant smells were an important part of the dining experience — rooms would be perfumed with flowers and incense, and water for handwashing was scented with rosewater and other aromatics. 

 Collections of Islamic art are filled with ceramics, glassware, and metal objects that were made for food or drink, but this is the first exhibition that puts this function front and center. So, my hope is that the show will appeal to many people who are not yet familiar with art from the Islamic world but are drawn to the themes of food and dining, and that it will also attract people with a prior interest in art from these regions.  

The exhibition is organized into thematic sections, which explore food culture from different angles. At the DIA, the theme of clean and safe drinking water is woven into the introduction — because you can’t have a thriving food culture without water.  

Another section looks at the dining experience by focusing on the sufra, a cloth spread or dining table where food is laid out for a meal. This section features a rich variety of works, including a sufra textile, paintings representing people eating together, and objects such as bowls, trays, cups, spoons, and napkins, which would be found on or near a sufra. There’s also an interactive sufra, where visitors are invited to sit on low cushions around a circular table to experience a digitally presented six-course meal based on historical recipes from throughout the Islamic world. (This concept might sound familiar to some DIA visitors — the digital sufra was developed by LACMA, but it was directly inspired by the DIA’s French dining table!) 

Other sections include “Continuity and Change,” which explores connections between dining cultures before and after the advent of Islam in the 600s; “Eating for Health,” which includes food-focused medical texts and pharmacy objects associated with food; “In the Kitchen,” which features works related to food preparation; “Outdoor Dining”; “Music and Entertainment”; “Dressing for Dinner”; and “Coffee Culture.” One of the last sections explores connections between the Islamic world and other regions, including China and Europe, with objects that show shared artistic styles or techniques in objects made for food. 

There are a lot of special works in this exhibition, and I’m thrilled to have them here in Detroit. One that I’m especially excited about is an illustrated cookbook from central India, now in the collection of the British Library, which was produced around the 1490s for the royal court in the city of Mandu (which was also called Shadiyabad, or “City of Joy”). It's called the Ni‘matnama, or “Book of Delights,” and it’s a historically important work that’s well known to scholars, but it’s also just completely delightful. It includes recipes for all kinds of dishes and snacks, and for various beverages, perfumes, aphrodisiacs, and medicines. At the DIA, the manuscript will be open to a section with recipes for rice dishes flavored with things like rosewater, saffron, ambergris, and other spices and aromatics. And, of course, lots of ghee.  

Another highlight of the show is a multimedia installation by Sadik Kwaish Alfraji, an Iraqi-born artist now based in the Netherlands, which LACMA commissioned for the exhibition. It has a beautifully poetic title, A Thread of Light between My Mother’s Fingers and Heaven, and it includes a large-scale animation, framed drawings, and photographs — all of which are rooted in Sadik’s memories of his mother, her homemade bread, and family meals in Baghdad. Sadik came to Detroit for the opening, and we hosted a live conversation between him and Diana Abouali, Director of the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, on September 22. That was a really special event. 

Sadik’s work will be difficult to miss, but some of the other highlights are smaller in scale. Another historical piece to look for is a glass ewer (the term for a spouted vessel with a handle, similar to a pitcher), made in Western Asia or Egypt around the year 1000, where an artist put a layer of green glass over a layer of colorless glass, then carved away the green layer to leave a design of birds, horned animals, and other motifs in relief. It’s an amazing piece and it’s sometimes called “the Corning ewer” because it’s now in the collection of the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York. This piece has been known to art historians for decades, but this is the first exhibition that focuses not only on its amazing artistry, but on what it might have contained. It could have been used for many beverages in its long history, including water, but if we picture it holding a colorful juice or sherbet, or perhaps wine, which was consumed by some elite people in the Islamic world, we can imagine how the color of the beverage would have added to the visual appeal of the ewer. 

I have lots of favorite works in the exhibition, including a tiny jade spoon from Mughal India, inlaid with precious stones, with its end carved into the shape of a bird’s head, now in the Al-Sabah collection in Kuwait, and a rooster-headed ewer from Seljuq Iran, part of the DIA’s own collection, and many others. I hope visitors enjoy finding their own favorites. 
 

The cookbooks in this exhibition, like any manuscript, were luxury objects commissioned by wealthy people. An illustrated manuscript like the Ni‘matnama was particularly expensive. Everything was written by hand; the patron had to cover the cost of the materials used to produce the book, like paper, ink, and sometimes paint; and expert scribes, painters, and bookbinders had to be paid for their time and skill. The tradition of recipe books being produced for the elite in the Islamic world dates to 10th-century Baghdad, when the author Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq compiled his Kitab al-Tabikh, or “Book of Dishes,” which brought together recipes that had been popular at the Abbasid court for generations. This text and other recipe books circulated for centuries across the Islamic world.  

 

Caliphs, kings, nobles, and other wealthy peoplehad an interest in gourmet culture. Some recipe books may have served as manuals for kitchen staff, but many were intended for patrons whose staff would have prepared the dishes for them. This seems to be the case with the Ni‘matnama. It's a luxurious illustrated manuscript produced for the sultan Ghiyath al-Din, and he had an interest in its content. It's likely that he enjoyed many of the recipes recorded in the book, but I don’t think his kitchen staff would have been consulting this copy of the text as they made rice with rosewater, saffron, and ambergris.  

The exhibition catalogue includes several historical recipes updated for modern cooking.The first time I went through it, one recipe in particular caught my eye. It’s a dish called judhaba al-mishmish, from the Abbasid court in Baghdad in the early-to mid-800s. You roast a chicken, then cover the pan with pieces of a flat bread like pita, which soak up the drippings, then you spread it with a mixture of apricot, saffron, and rosewater, and put the shredded chicken on top. I haven’t ventured to make this dish yet, but I got to try it at the home of DIA patrons Ali Moiin and Bill Kupsky, who hosted a fundraising dinner in support of the exhibition. They made the dish to perfection, and it was delicious! 

I haven’t had much time to cook elaborate dishes since working on the exhibition, but my partner Jeff and I have been expanding our repertoire of mujaddara recipes. Also, I love hummus, and I was fascinated to learn while doing research for the show that the hummus most of us eat today is much plainer than the hummus that people in the medieval Islamic world knew. According to Paulina Lewicka, the author of a book about all things food-related in medieval Cairo, hummus called not only for chickpeas, tahini, garlic, and lemon juice, but also vinegar, oil, mint, pistachios, and spices like cinnamon, coriander, and caraway. Maybe I should try dressing up my hummus. 

The Islamic world certainly was, and still is, very large and diverse, and many of the works in the show demonstrate cross-cultural interactions and multidirectional inspiration. For example, blue-and-white ceramics — which remain popular in kitchens and dining rooms across the world today — have their origins in the 800s in Basra, Iraq, which was a thriving port city and a hub for people, things, and ideas from many parts of the world. Inspired by the smooth white surfaces of imported Chinese ceramics, potters in Basra created a tin-based glaze that gave their ceramics a similar texture and color. But while the Chinese imports were plain white, Basra potters decorated their ceramics with designs painted in cobalt blue. These were exported far and wide, and before long, Chinese potters also started painting their white ceramics in cobalt, to fill the growing demand for blue-and-white dishes in international markets. This cobalt, by the way, was imported from Iran and surrounding regions, so international exchange played a role in more than one way. By the 1300s–1400s, Chinese blue-and-white porcelain was a mark of prestige and elegance in many parts of the world, and potters in Iran, Turkey, and other places developed their own regional versions, inspired by the more expensive Chinese imports. The exhibition tells this story through beautiful ceramic works from many of these places, and through paintings representing people eating from blue-and-white dishes. 

 

Cross-regional and cross-cultural interactions come into play in many other ways within the exhibition, too. There are cookbooks and health manuals that were translated into different languages and copied in many regions; there are paintings by artists who migrated to new places, bringing their artistic practices with them but also incorporating new styles and techniques into their work; and there are objects that would have been traded across long distances. For example, there’s a huge, green-glazed storage jar from the DIA’s collection in the exhibition. Jars like this one were made for foods such as oils, syrups, or grains, and they were used to both store and transport those foods. That's another way these objects and traditions of material culture traveled across different geographies. 

There are a lot of possible takeaways, but first and foremost, I hope visitors enjoy the show and learn something new that they find interesting. Maybe some of them will discover an interest in Islamic art and be inspired to visit the DIA’s permanent-collection galleries! I would also love it if the exhibition encourages people to reflect on the similarities and differences between their own experiences with food and food culture, and those they see in the show — and to think about similarities and differences between the many diverse cultural traditions that are represented within the show itself. It's interesting to see that people in, say, ninth-century Baghdad, which might seem distant to us today, were also interested in gourmet dishes and beautiful tableware. We can relate to that through the shared practices of eating and drinking, of serving and enjoying food in communal meals. But it’s just as important to notice the variety of objects represented in the show. The people who made and used them came from specific places and moments in history; they were not all the same. 

At the end of the exhibition, we have a response station that prompts visitors to share how food connects them to people, places, and memories. I’m optimistic that we’ll get a lot of thoughtful responses, and I’m looking forward to seeing them. 

Learn more about the exhibition at dia.org/ArtofDining.  

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The Art of Dining: Food Culture in the Islamic World is organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 

At the Detroit Institute of Arts, the exhibition is generously supported by the Friends of Asian Arts and Cultures.

The Art of Dining: Food Culture in the Islamic World has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. 

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.