In Harmony: The Norma Jean Calderwood Collection of Islamic Art, an exhibition at Harvard University’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum, celebrated the university’s acquisition of Norma Jean Calderwood’s impressive, yet largely unpublished, private collection of Persianate art. Mary McWilliams, the Norma Jean Calderwood Curator of Islamic and Later Indian Art, certainly faced challenges in cohesively displaying this private collection, which consists of a disparate array of over 140 objects and spans a thousand years of production history. However, the exhibition ultimately provided a thoughtful and welcome display of Islamic art during a time in which Harvard’s permanent Islamic collection is not on view (it is scheduled for reinstallation in late 2014).

Prior to their donation to Harvard University, most of the objects on display were housed in Calderwood’s private residence in Belmont, MA. Harvard was first approached with the opportunity to receive the Calderwood collection in 2002, and a highlights show entitled Closely Focused, Intensely Felt: Selections from the Norma Jean Calderwood Collection of Islamic Art was held August 7, 2004–January 2, 2005. According to McWilliams, when Calderwood’s husband, Stanford, approached McWilliams with the possibility of a donation, he stipulated that an exhibition of the objects should be mounted, and that the exhibition should focus on the content of the collection, rather than on the biography of the collector. Although Calderwood’s biography is not addressed overtly in the current exhibition, as with any private collection the tastes and shifting interests of the individual collector are inherently part of the display. Calderwood began her collection of Islamic art in 1968, on a trip to Iran with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she was a volunteer. In these early years of untrained collecting, from 1968 to 1978, she focused on the acquisition of ceramics. From 1978 to 1997, her collecting practices shifted to works on paper, following her time as a graduate student at Harvard, where she studied with Oleg Grabar, Stuart Carey Welch, and Wheeler Thackston. Ironically, while her training at Harvard and access to the university’s already rich collection of works on paper directed her focus away from ceramics, it is perhaps her ceramic collection that will be a particularly welcome addition to the university’s permanent collection.

Calderwood taught courses at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Boston College. According to McWilliams, the title of the exhibition, In Harmony, refers to Calderwood’s own characterization of Islamic art. She advised her students that at first glance many of the works might seem overwhelming in their complex, intricate visual elements. However, these elements come together to function in harmony with one another.

The In Harmony exhibition greeted visitors with a stunning, large-scale page from the famous Shahnama (Book of Kings) of Shah Tahmasp (1520s–1530s), painted in Tabriz for the Safavid ruler in Iran. In it, the mythical leaders Afrasiyab and Siyavush embrace, ending the wars between Iran and Turan, and illustrating the exhibition’s theme of harmony. The exhibition also includes works depicting the constant warring that makes many of the Shahnama’s illustrations so dynamic.

Following this dazzling introduction, the organization of the exhibition shifted between chronology, medium, and even iconographic themes. While some groupings, such as the display of multiple pages of a Shirazi Shahnama, were academically valuable, others are more whimsical, for example, the display case devoted to images of birds, and a wall devoted to themes of love. These shifts in display themes point to the particular challenges of curating an exhibition of an eclectic private collection, but offered a pleasing display solution for the exhibition’s visitors.

Following a clockwise exploration, the exhibition generally progressed from ceramics, to manuscript pages, to a final wall of single-page folios and lacquerware. However, at points in the exhibition the display of various media was combined. Some viewing conditions were cramped due to the large number of objects and the relatively small space. Likewise, the wall positioning and lighting made it challenging to view some of the subtle details of the works on paper. Nonetheless, the intricacy of the objects drew viewers in, and magnifying glasses were available for viewing manuscript pages in greater detail.

Some of the first objects on display illustrated Calderwood’s early interest in ceramics. Highlights included some of the most famous techniques of Islamic ceramics, including a luster bowl from Abbasid Iraq (tenth century) and examples of twelfth- and thirteenth-century minai ware. In addition, an example of Samanid epigraphic ware featured the characteristic white slipware, with minimalist, elongated calligraphy. Samanid wares generally include popular phrases or benedictions. By contrast, the striking example from Samarkand from Calderwood’s collection highlights a religious hadith from the Prophet Muhammad and ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, the prophet’s son-in-law and the fourth caliph of Islam. Muhammad’s words, executed in black in the outer ring, advise: “Modesty is a branch of faith, and faith is in paradise.” In the center of this inscription is a saying attributed to ‘Ali—executed in red and echoing the theme of Muhammed’s words—that reads, “Greed is a sign of poverty.” While epigraphic ware is perhaps the best-known type of Samanid ceramics, Samanid ware featuring figural motifs were also on display.

Following the display cases of ceramics, the exhibition progressed to Calderwood’s later collection of Persian painting, with examples of illuminations from the Shahnama written by Abu’l-Qasim Firdawsi (d. ca. 1025) and from the book of poetry called the Khamsa (Quintet) of Nizami (d. ca. 1209). Both of these works were popular subjects for illuminated manuscripts in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Many of the works on paper from Calderwood’s collection came from the Iranian city of Shiraz, a prolific center of painting in the sixteenth century, though generally not as prestigious as those produced in the Safavid center of production, Tabriz.

A particular strength of the exhibition, from a codicological standpoint, was the diversity of manuscript pages assembled together, rather than simply highlighting the illuminations. In one such example sixteen folios of a Shahnama were arranged together in a double spread. The display included the front matter, back matter, and colophon, which informed the reader that the book was produced in Shiraz in 1562. The work had been purchased in its entirety but later broken up in 1995. While collectors like Calderwood fueled the market for such dismantling, the museum display allowed the viewer to imagine how it might have been assembled originally, as well as how scholars might learn about the context of book production. For viewers who might be more accustomed to seeing individual pages completely isolated from their original context, this was a particularly valuable display for understanding the book as a complete work.

Calderwood’s single-page album paintings were clustered toward the end of the exhibition. These works are characteristic of seventeenth-century Safavid production under Shah ‘Abbas in his new capital of Isfahan. Calderwood’s collection also included later Persian and Mughal examples. The importance of single-page compositions in the seventeenth century could be seen in Young Dervish (Isfahan, ca. 1630), painted by the famous Safavid artist Riza ‘Abbasi. Although this work was a welcome highlight of the exhibition, it was grouped with images of love from various times, styles, artists, and media, which demonstrated Calderwood’s diverse collecting interests.

Layar technology was integrated with the display of many objects. Downloading a mobile app allowed a visitor to use this technology to learn more about an object. At the time of my visit the application was not consistently operable. It did, however, show great potential in a short video that demonstrated how a ceramic dish for sweet meats might have been constructed. The use of this technology may certainly allow for more interactive gallery experiences in the future.

While visitors to In Harmony might be amazed by the diversity of subject matter, the glory of Persian painting, and various explorations of the human figure, it was perhaps the biographical questions of collecting that made the exhibition most interesting. While interest in Islamic art has been stoked by the reinstallation of the Metropolitan Museum’s Islamic galleries (click here for review), In Harmony offers yet another welcome representation of Islamic art during the temporary closure of the Sackler’s galleries. Its accompanying scholarly publications and its augmentation of Harvard’s permanent collection—particularly in medieval ceramics—will also provide an indelible contribution to the field of Islamic art.