Speaking the same language

Nadim Sheiban, the new director of the Museum for Islamic Art, hopes to double its number of visitors and overcome the negative global image of Islam.

By BARRY DAVIS
Nadim Sheiban with the clock collection. (photo credit: PR)
Nadim Sheiban with the clock collection.
(photo credit: PR)
Nadim Sheiban has not been in the director’s seat for long, but he says he’s already well into the job of running the affairs of the Museum for Islamic Art.
“I started on September 1, but I feel deeply immersed in it,” he says.
In truth Sheiban, thought to be the first Arab museum director in the history of Israel, is not exactly new to the scene. He was a member of the management board for several years before joining the staff, although mana ging the museum on a daily basis is a very different kettle of fish.
“When I was on the board I’d come by two or three times a year, so I was familiar with the place; but coming here every morning and dealing with every aspect of this institution is very different,” he notes.
The museum was founded by the late Vera Bryce Salomons and opened in 1974. It is named after Salomons’s professor, Leo Aryeh Mayer, who served as rector of the Hebrew University and died in 1959. The impressive building located down the road from the Jerusalem Theater incorporates nine galleries that display a rich array of Islamic artifacts, including pottery, jewelry, glassware, weaponry, textiles and carpets that originate from across the Muslim world, from Spain to India.
There are also periodic exhibitions of contemporary Arab or Arab-themed art. For example, the informative and entertaining “Diary of a Donkey” exhibition that opened last month examines various aspects of a creature that often gets a bad rap in Western society while being a prized possession in the traditional Arab world. The group exhibition contains works by Arab and Jewish artists, dating back from the 1920s to the present day, and includes paintings by Reuven Rubin and Nahum Gutman, Palestinian artists Asad Azi and Ashraf Fawakhry, internationally acclaimed Beirut-born Jewish sculpture, painter and filmmaker Benni Efrat and photographer Ammar Younis.
There is also the magnificent collection of clocks, a large number of which were stolen in 1983 in a daring heist.
Amazingly, some found their way back to the museum more than 20 years later. The “Marie Antoinette” clock alone – which Sheiban calls “the most beautiful clock in the world” – makes a visit to the museum worthwhile.
Sheiban brings a wealth of experience to his new job.
To date, the youthful-looking 62-year-old Galilee-born secular Christian director has overseen all manner of project in the fields of welfare, education, civil rights and coexistence. Prior to moving into the office in the Hapalmah Street building, he served as projects manager at the Jerusalem Foundation and is also a qualified social worker and lawyer. He gained the latter diploma in 2011 and completed his legal internship at the Ken Lazaken NPO, which promotes the rights of senior citizens in Israel. During his year there, he undertook legal battles against the Finance Ministry, the Economy Ministry and the Population and Immigration Authority to help set criteria to improve the status of senior citizens. He also established an Arabic-language hotline.
Sheiban says that while he felt he’d taken his decadelong work at the Jerusalem Foundation as far as it would go, he had no designs on his current job.
“We were looking for a new director of the museum, but I was considering it myself,” he smiles, adding that whoever took on the post would have his work cut out for him.
“The place had not progressed much in the previous years. The person who managed the place was also the chairman, and he was not too engaged in the goings on here. We needed someone who could tie in all the areas of the museum together and shake the place up a bit. People I spoke to felt the museum had become outdated and needed a refresher.”
IN ADDITION to bringing the museum up to scratch as a leading institution vying for the attentions of the culture consumer, Sheiban says the museum offers tremendous potential and demands plenty of elbow grease. “This is an enormous challenge.
This place has a very important role to play in the life of Jerusalem.”
In terms of timing, Sheiban’s entry to the museum could hardly have been more trying, although the director is hardly to blame for that.
“I started here immediately after the war [in Gaza], when Islamists were viewed as people who destroyed art, and it was hard to see what I could possibly achieve here at the time. It looked like an unwise adventure,” he says.
Sheiban was keen to set the museum apart from other similar institutions around the world and, particularly, to get away from the negative global image of Islam. “Today, on the one hand you have terrorist Islamist groups that inflict damage on all humanity; and on the other hand, you have the fears of the West of the shifting of Arab populations. Throughout history, local populations have been fearful of the arrival of new immigrant groups. In the past, there has been hatred of Italians, Jews, the Irish, all sorts. I understand that,” he says.
The director also says he understands the reasons for Islamophobia, although, naturally, wants to get away from a situation in which blanket hatred for all Arabs is the norm.
“There are countless examples of what fanaticism does to society, including here in Jerusalem, so this museum aims to present a different model. This museum is here to show off Islamic art. There are some amazing artifacts here, primarily from the eighth century to the 19th century, as the art was expressed in different societies across the centuries,” he says.
The exhibits also portray the wealth of knowledge accumulated and disseminated by the Arab world. “There are artifacts here from the fields of chemistry, mathematics, astrology, physics and art, including calligraphy. There is a lot to see here,” he points out.
Sheiban says he is also looking to double the attendance of the museum from its current level of 42,000 visitors a year. He wants to bring in members of the public from all sectors of the population and from abroad, including students and families from east Jerusalem.
He is, of course, aware that he will have to devote resources to marketing and profile enhancement. He would like the public to relate more to the positive side of Islam rather than the terrorismrelated image promulgated through the world media.
“This is a wonderful museum. Every day I come here, I am transfixed by what there is here. I want to offer lectures about Islam and Islamic art, and I want people to get closer to this and to appreciate what Islam has to offer,” he says.
Sheiban is well aware of the scale of the task at hand, but he is no stranger to challenges.
“I have served in all sorts of positions in Jerusalem, and I have contributed to almost every aspect of life in the city. I have worked in welfare and held high-ranking positions and worked with Jews and Arabs alike. There were plenty of people in the municipality who raised an eyebrow when they saw they were dealing with an Arab, but I proved to them that I am not only equal to anyone else but in fact better than them with lots of experience. I had to overcome all sorts of barriers in the municipality and other places, and I will do the same with the museum,” he asserts.