Exhibition: New York Museum Explores Mystery Of Orient

Huliq.com

Through paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, decorative arts, costume, ancient relics and modern souvenirs-drawn almost entirely from the New-York Historical Society's extensive collections-Allure of the East: Orientalism in New York, 1850-1930 explores Gotham's enduring fascination with the distant lands of the Middle East.

The exhibition provides historical context for Woven Splendor from Timbuktu to Tibet: Exotic Rugs and Textiles from New York Collectors, which is showing concurrently at the Historical Society. Both exhibits open April 11 and run through August 17.

Derived from the Latin word for East, the term Orient was long used in Western Europe (the Occident) to refer to the lands of the Ottoman Empire, specifically those of the Middle East and North Africa. Orientalism began to take hold of the American imagination, as it did in Europe, following Napoleon's 1798 invasion of Egypt. But its ascendancy in popular culture really coincided with the opening of steamship routes across the Mediterranean during the mid-1800s.

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