Islamic Art with Simon Rettig

Founded in 1923, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, located on the National Mall in the heart of Washington, D.C. is renowned for its holdings of Chinese and Japanese art as well as of American art from the Gilded Age, with iconic Whistler’s Peacock Room. Lesser known, however, are its collections of the arts of the Islamic world. Neither encyclopedic nor comprehensive, it includes, nevertheless, extraordinary objects originating from a vast geographic area extending from Spain to India and dating from the eighth to the nineteenth century. In this talk, Simon Rettig will share the multifaceted story of some of these masterpieces and present the formation of the museum’s collections of Islamic art.

About Simon Rettig

Dr. Simon Rettig is the Associate Curator for the Arts of the Islamic World at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, DC. He received his BA from the École du Louvre in Paris and his MA and Doctorate from Aix-Marseille University, France. Rettig has curated many exhibitions, including Nasta‘liq: The Genius of Persian Calligraphy (2014), The Art of the Qur’an: Treasures from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art (2016), The Prince and the Shah: Royal Portraits from Qajar Iran (2018), and An Epic of Kings: The Great Mongol Shahnama (2024). His forthcoming exhibition From the Louvre: Masterpieces of Islamic Art, opening in September 2026, is co-curated with Dr. Souraya Noujaim, Director of the Islamic Art Department at the musée du Louvre. A specialist of the Islamic arts of the book, with a special focus on Iran and Türkiye, Rettig has lectured and published e