INTRO
Welcome to Artful Conversations – a podcast about arts and cultural management. Annetta Latham and guest hosts interview leaders who help shape the world of arts and culture. We share their stories, their insights and observations. This season has been brought to you with the support of the faculty of fine arts and communications at MacEwan University.
ROBIN: Welcome to Artful Conversations. I'm your host, Robin Nelson. Today, my guest is Dr. Ulrike Al-Khamis.
Dr. Ulrike Al-Khamis is the Director and CEO of the Aga Khan Museum. She is a well-known figure in the field with over 20 years of experience as a curator and senior advisor for museum and cultural projects. She holds a Ph.D. in Islamic art from the University of Edinburgh and served as co-director at the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization, as well as Senior Strategist, Strategic Advisor to the Sharjah Museums Department in the UAE from 2007 to 2017. She began her career in Scotland, where she worked as Principal Curator for South Asia and the Middle East at the National Museums of Scotland from 1999 to 2007, and Curator for Muslim Art and Culture at Glasgow Museums from 1994 to 1999.
Dr. Al-Khamis is the first to hold the position of Director of Collections and Public Programs at the Aga Khan Museum, a role that oversees all of the Museum's activities related to collection management, academic research exhibitions, public programing and performing arts initiatives. She leads a team of subject-matter specialists and program managers to establish a strategically cohesive and sustainable set of audience focused programs and initiatives to devise further the museum's mandate and role locally, nationally and internationally, within the framework of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the Aga Khan Development Network more generally.
ROBIN: So the Aga Khan Museum is a part of the Aga Khan Development Network. For listeners that are not familiar with the network, can you talk about its history, mandate and the Aga Khan Museum's role within it?
ULRIKE: Of course, absolutely. The Aga Khan Development Network is a global network that was established by His Highness, the Aga Khan, who is the spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims and the 49th Imam of the Ismaili Muslims for the benefit of positive social development, education, health care, irrespective of origin, of faith or of gender. So it is really a humanist initiative and it was launched in 1967, is based mainly or focused mainly on countries in Africa and across Asia and has within it, of course, many different subdivisions that deal with specific aspects or, you know, health, education, environmental issues, microfinance, empowering particularly girls and women and so on. And it also has a cultural arm, which is the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, which was established in 1988 and encompasses, in turn within it the Historic Cities Program, which is focused on cultural heritage preservation and capacity building of traditional skills around that, then the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, which recognizes and celebrates architects that work within the Muslim world, not exclusively for Muslim communities at all, but very much off the radar in many cases as far as the Western gaze is concerned when it comes to user friendly and citizen focused architecture in in countries across the Southern Hemisphere.
Then we have the Aga Khan Music Initiative, which was launched in 2018. Again, is looking at showcasing and celebrating outstanding traditional musicians from the region. And then there is the museum, which was opened in Toronto, Canada in September 2014 with the mandate of, on the one hand, showcasing Muslim civilizations past and present and fostering pluralism across and beyond differences through the arts. So the reason why the museum was actually based in Toronto was the realization that there was a great ethical alignment between the ethos and the vision and mandate of His Highness and his community and the country of Canada in its stated political commitment to pluralism and to building inclusive, positive societies.
So it was this alignment and the recognition of the efforts of Canada and of course, Toronto as a city of sanctuary and refuge as well. That made this decision an easy one with also an eye, of course, on the fact that the museum was seen and is seen as a beacon that can also educate across the borders into the US, because obviously the events of September 11, 2001, and the growing divide or gap, perceived divide or gap between Muslim and non-Muslim communities was something that was very much on the mind of the founder as well. And of course, it's an integral part of what we do.
ROBIN: Thank you so much. I've always wondered why Toronto. So that was a really interesting answer. In what ways do you see the Aga Khan Museum reimagining the role of the museum?
ULRIKE: That's a beautiful question that we spend most of our time thinking about. So traditionally, you would say a museum is a place where you collect and you preserve and you interpret objects. For me, a museum is not about objects. For me, a museum is about people. And we use the objects to bring people together. We use the objects as catalysts for conversation, as conduits for learning with each other, from each other, and as a starting point for a multitude of stories. Because one other challenge that traditional museum approaches have is that the voice in the museum tends to be largely driven by curators, expert voices that project one storyline without necessarily allowing the space for the reality that an object can tell a multitude of stories and can empower a multitude of voices.
So I always say, let's set the objects free and let them tell us stories that still have relevance in our world today, even when they come from a very specific non-Western culture, from a very specific time. There are aspects encapsulated in every object that can allow us to talk about what we are interested in today. What we are concerned about today. And in fact, what also brings us together. And that is what we are very much driving, increasingly driving through our eminent collection, which we are in the process of actually reconceptualizing and really displaying with this kind of philosophy in mind.
Then through our temporary exhibitions, our artist in residence initiatives, our public and educational programs, and actually also very much through our performing arts program. Because one thing that museums also do not tend to project is the fact that in many cultures and actually most cultures around the world, the arts are not only the material and the visual arts as we tend to see them today, but they were always considered integral with the intangible arts, the poetry, the literature, the musical expressions, the spiritual expressions. And we are really hoping to really focus visitors’ awareness around the potential of that tool. Every object also has an intangible dimension.
ROBIN: Great. Your answer really kind of leads well into the next question, which is about the audience focused nature of the Aga Khan Museum. So your answer really reflected the fact you're not a very object focused museum, but you're focused on stories and ideas and audiences. So one of the questions I teach museum management and the question of how often comes up is how do we do something different? So how does the museum prioritize and develop audience focused programs and initiatives? What considerations are involved in that process?
ULRIKE: Yeah. So first of all, I have to emphasize with us only being eight years old, this is a work in progress. And the covid crisis, of course, has thrown us back as well. But at the same time, it has really opened our eyes to new opportunities to take our vision out into the digital domain. So things already have changed away from the physical exclusively to online blended and so on.
ROBIN: You have a great online program. And of course, if anyone listening hasn't seen it, I recommend going to the website.
ULRIKE: Thank you so very much. And of course, there then we consider audience in different ways or in multifaceted ways, I should say. So when we look at the physical museum in Toronto, the way that we look at our audiences is, on the one hand, our traditional audiences. And these are numerically very much educational audiences. So schools, colleges, universities, and we have existing programs, which you already alluded to, but we also keep thinking about and consulting with our education partners around what the needs are out there and how can we be of service. Because again, traditionally, and I'm really being a little bit polemic here, museums tended to create work inside internally and then they think this is cool and the audience must love this because, you know, curators have decided this is cool, but we are looking at it in a completely opposite way and we are learning a lot and being humbled by the experiences and having our stereotypes challenged is start outside in the real world and see what the needs are and see what the preoccupations are.
So coming back to schools and educational institutions, we are looking in particular at gaps that high schools might have, that youth might have that deal with issues like climate change. So for example, we recently developed teacher toolkits with the Aga Khan Foundation Canada, around four of the Sustainable Development Goals. But the teaching springboard for engaging with these four themes are Islamic art objects. So a very unusual idea, but it works really very well. Then we also look at what to provide for schools that have a high percentage of newcomer students. So, for example, we recently hosted visits by a couple of schools, I think, from Mississauga, that had a lot of refugee kids in their classes, some of which had only been in Canada for a week. And they came to the museum and the teachers told us afterwards that they were so touched by the fact that they found themselves through the artworks that they saw in the museum. And actually, one of our guides on that occasion was a Syrian Canadian who was able to welcome some of the kids in Arabic and then enabled the kids to ask about whether there were objects in the museum, take them there and then explain to their peers through the translation help of the guide how excited they were and what these artworks meant to them. So it was providing them with a sense of belonging before you provide them with the sense of learning. Now in the digital domain we have consolidated and we continued to grow our relationships with partner organizations and particularly also within the network.
So the Aga Khan Academies regularly contact us and they are based in particularly African countries and in South Asia. And recently I did a virtual classroom and a virtual field trip for kids that were sitting concurrently in Mombasa, Kenya, in Mozambique, Maputo, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and in Hyderabad, India. And the topic that I explored with them through the virtual visit to the gallery was still life. So now you might ask, what is she doing teaching still life in an Islamic art museum? But I said to the instructor, Why are you teaching Western style or Western centric still life painting to children who have such rich artistic traditions to explore in their own cultures? But then I said, Look, if you take still life to its very essence and its component pieces, then it is an approach that actually can be found in all cultures of the world. So why don't I give you this virtual tour and I give you three four case studies of still life through the example of Muslim civilizations, thereby then opening the children's minds to the opportunity that they can look at still life in a very different way. So that's how we deal with school audiences.
And then, of course, we consider our families. Our demographic has changed. Very interestingly, after the covid crisis, it's much more diverse, it's younger, it's many families, and particularly interestingly from East Asian, Canadian backgrounds. So again, then we want to look at how we can make them welcome beyond feeling welcome, because obviously we want them also to come back. So as a very first measure, we developed a small family guide to take through the museum that talks about East Asia and the Islamic world. So to make these connections. And then, of course, we have adult learners and we have different initiatives for them. We have online courses. We launched a talk series with Massey College this year. Again, taking the topics of the exhibition, we had Image?—The Power of the Visual, into the domain of public discourse. So what do images mean today? Images of power, identity and so on. So, as I said, work in progress, but really starting outside and trying to come to consider how can we meet needs and how can we be of service in this very complex and fraught world?
ROBIN: So one of the ways that you meet needs that I find really interesting is you don't just have exhibition spaces. You also have spaces for performing arts and contemporary art. Can you discuss the role the arts have in the museum and its benefits?
ULRIKE: Well, as I said, you know, you have to think of the arts as a as an integral phenomenon, not divided by discipline, because that's, again, a very Western centric way of looking at museum collections as distinct from contemporary art. You know, ultimately in so many ways, contemporary art is a continuation of what we have in our museums today. We are just dissecting it in weird ways, right? So one way we are making the case for the continuing relevance of artworks, historic artworks, is by having artists in residence or incorporating contemporary art into our permanent galleries and create dialog between historic pieces and contemporary thought. So to give you an example of that, at the moment we have a rotation in the gallery which focuses on birds, a very universal topic. Everyone from all cultures in the world love birds. And so you can you can go on a journey of discovery through the gallery, finding Islamic artworks that explain about birds and their meanings, symbolism, etc.. And then at the heart of the gallery, we are putting them in dialog with watercolors that were painted by two English sisters in the early 19th century in southern India. And through that, make people aware of the fact that when we look at artworks, especially when we look at artworks across cultures, even if we are standing in front of the same artwork, we do not see the same thing. And where the English ladies were giving it their best to create physically, scientifically accurate depiction of a particular manifestation of a scientific ornithological species, the way that mogul artists in 17/18th century India painted the same bird was with the understanding that this bird was part of a universe over which their rulers resided like a [King] Solomon presided over a universe that was harmonious and where the ruler was so in tune with all the beings in his universe that he could even speak the language of the birds and the language of animals. And every species represents, in fact, a quality and a human trait.
So when people at that time in that culture would have looked at that same picture of a bird, they would have seen something completely different from what the English lady saw in that painting. So you then have a phenomenal conversation starter. What is it you see? And take it from there. And this installation is completed then by a contemporary Turkish artist called Hakan Topal, The Golden Cage, where in a multi-media installation he contemplates the plight of the black ibis bird that has its thousand year history of migration and tradition disrupted because of conflict on the Turkish-Syrian border, and takes that as a metaphor for the disruption of human existence and human migration in the face of conflict and climate change. So imagine the conversations that are going on in our Islamic art gallery. And just to put the cherry on top of the cake, the curator who is looking after this project [overall] then went and brought in an ornithological society and organized birdwatching tours that started in the park outside the museum, and then continued into the gallery. So there you then suddenly realize that what is depicted in the art through different disciplines, cultures, centuries is interconnected organically with what is happening in nature and outside in the real world. And that is the crucial thing. We need to reconnect the dots among very important media of messages and stories that have been dissected artificially.
ROBIN: Thank you. You've provided a lot of really rich examples of things that the museum has been doing and why. I'm wondering, in your role as CEO, do you have specific goals for the future of the museum? Where do you see potential areas of growth for the museum in the next five years?
ULRIKE: So I would say, first of all, I want to move the museum ever more closely into the central discourse of everything we care about here in Toronto and in Canada. And I want to make people realize that a museum has the potential to provide a host of stories around the collections that are inclusive and that offer alternative narratives to the often very one tracked until now relatively one tracked forms of learning curricula, etc. that we have at our disposal. And that is increasingly important as the population of Canada diversifies and we are welcoming even more new Canadians from all around the world and who currently do not see themselves reflected in what they are then being taught here through our various educational systems and including museums and cultural organizations as well. And that we also then of course have to put in meaningful, respectful and learning oriented dialog with the histories and stories of Indigenous peoples. Because there are a lot of connecting points where we can also, as a museum, open up opportunity, empower welcoming and inclusive conversations and new departure points around objects. And then, of course, in the digital domain, I really have a vision of taking our storytelling, our pluralistic approach to education and to seeing the world at large into the world and around the globe because I think there are many opportunities for us to make a positive difference. And ultimately, everything we do is about peacemaking. Remember I said it's about people. So it's about peacemaking, impacting lives in a positive way, and also, of course, changing minds and building more empathy and solidarity across and beyond differences people might perceive.
ROBIN: I think a word that keeps coming to mind when you're talking is connection. Keep talking about connecting points for people. So you want to see that moving forward as well?
ULRIKE: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes.
ROBIN: Okay, great. Is there anything you would like to add to the conversation that would be beneficial for our listeners to know? For example, we have a lot of listeners who are students in arts and cultural management. So as they enter the field, do you have any specific advice or anything you'd like them to know about the museum?
ULRIKE: Question. Go and question. Question the materials you engage with. Question whether they are fit for purpose for everyone or whether they need alternative thinking in order to make space for the wisdoms and potential contributions of other cultures that are coming into the country, that already are living in the country that have been here for thousands of years. Look at what is needed to empower students equally that might come from different cultures of learning, that might have a different approach to language, a different approach to cultural translation. There's so much potential out there, and I think if COVID has taught us anything, it is we don't have to do it the traditional way anymore. We should be open to really asking how can we make it better together and allow diverse voices, ideas, concepts, structures to the table? And yes, that's a bit scary. And yes, it's very experimental. But I think if we open ourselves up to the possibility of doing it differently and just open up the floor. Really, really amazing stuff can come out. And within the context of Canada, I think this is a potential of mindset that perhaps no one else really has galvanized as yet. And we have so many potential wisdom keepers from many different cultures among our communities. Let's just not try and force them all into the existing way of doing things. But let's just question a wee bit and let's see what comes out at the other end. I mean, that's what I'm always super excited about every day in my work.
ROBIN: So you suggested there that COVID was kind of a point that made you question and changed some of what you were doing. How did COVID change the museum's work?
ULRIKE: Well, very practically. Of course, within a week, we had to pivot from physical to digital. You know, we had gently started looking at digital, but not in a very strategic way and not in with an eye on the amazing potential that it has. Right. And then we were really forced into the situation. So within a an amazingly short period of time, we then had to figure out how could we stay connected with our audiences and how could we be of service and meet needs when we were locked back in our bedrooms? Right. And it was amazing how the staff rallied together beyond the JDs as well, because don't forget, we didn't have the technological knowledge necessarily either to just, you know, do it on our iPhones or and we hardly knew what Zoom was at the time. So and we all rallied together and experimented very rudimentary at the beginning. But then it became a kind of, okay, this is cool, what can we do next and how can we do this? And Oh, we could actually do podcasts and we could actually do documentaries. And our head of performing arts, for example, went off and did an amazing —actually two now— documentaries on world musicians working with them in their countries and also here in Canada. Amazing. And then you suddenly realized that you could have very meaningful conversations with practitioners and colleagues on the other side of the world that under normal circumstances, you would have perhaps planned to fly around the world for tons of money polluting the environment and not reaching more than 350 people max because that's what our auditorium takes. Right. Imagine in the in the year of the COVID crisis, the worst year, we reached over 6 million people.
ROBIN: Wow.
ULRIKE: Right. 6 million people. Where our best attendance physically on the ground in 2019 was just short of 170,000. Right. Then you suddenly get this buzz and you think, oh, my God, I can actually really change the world here if I get the right partners, if I get the right minds, because that's crucial. And one other thing that really has emerged out of all of this is also the talent pool and the realization that what you really need now is people who have the right mindset. Yes, they do need certain core technical skills, for sure. But much more important is the experimental spirit, the courage to be antifragile test something out experimented. If it fails, no problem. Change direction. Try something else. Right. Be flexible. Be a team player. And as I said, you know, bring in - look at your colleagues in the room and see what talents they have, you know, beyond and within your JD and then see what you care about and run with it and, you know, make your contribution. So I think that was the most amazing thing.
And then of course, from a sustainability point of view, I mean, I don't want to be exclusively happy clappy and airy fairy, but of course there is also great potential for revenue generation and also of course government funding that's become available since the crisis. And of course, donor preoccupation and priorities, which have also increasingly shifted by thinking about your social impact, your positive impact and really making a difference through the arts. So there are so many really strands that come together and it's work in progress. It's not easy because it's also, of course, a challenge working with ongoing uncertainties. We are not out of the woods yet in many ways, but this newly found freedom of not having to stick to all the old-fashioned ways or the conventional ways of doing things. Driven also by the urgency that we have to approach things in a different way is really exciting. And one aspect in particular that unites us all is climate change. So we are also looking at where we can add value there.
I mentioned Sustainable Development Goals, but we are also working with the University of Waterloo, with the Water Institute, to hopefully establish a programmatic framework to mark World Water Day every year. You know, so you then take what we are doing out of a very specific niche art historical collection corner into a global and national and local playing field where you can demonstrate that you actually care and you want to make a contribution to a better world.
ROBIN: Well, thank you so much both for that lovely answer and for talking with me today.
ULRIKE: Thank you so much and take care.
OUTRO
This show was created by executive producer and host Annetta Latham, Technical Producer Paul Johnston and research assistants Terri Le Gear, Micah Carter and Ian Small.
Theme music by Emily Darfur and cover art by Constanza Pacher. Special thanks to MacEwan University for their support and to our guests. Artful Conversations is a production of Artful Creative, all rights reserved.
REFERENCE
Latham, A. (Executive Producer). Nelson, R (Host). (2022, November 16) [Season 3: Episode 06]. Ulrike Al-Khamis. Podcast retrieved from: www.artfulconversations.com/season-3
Appended comment from Ulrike:
ULRIKE: And all these challenges. But I said, why don't we just flip the conversation and I give you an artwork from our collection that symbolizes ideal leadership and overseeing a harmonious, inclusive, integrated universe? Because in that miniature painting, this ideal leader, which according to the epic it comes from, was invested at the beginning of time, is overlooking the circle of human beings of all colors, men and women standing in the landscape where the lion lies next to the gazelles. So they are in peace. And even the rock faces have little faces, referencing the fact that nature is alive and imbued with, you know, divine spirit. And I said, if you use that miniature painting, all the children with their respective challenges can actually look at it shoulder to shoulder and speak about what would be needed from their perspective to create a positive universe and an harmonious, inclusive universe. So right. Because then you create this platform of us rather than always looking across and going, so how is it for you? So how is it for you? So what do we do here? Because ultimately the challenges are the same. You know, the evil that kind of hangs over all of us comes from the same kind of fears and ignorance and lack of education and whatever. So if people can realize that beyond their specific issues, they are unified and they have unified challenges, then the solidarity base becomes much broader.