Orientalism: Between Fact and Fantasy

In ancient Rome, the Latin root of the word “Orient” denoted the direction of the rising sun—the east. Orientalism: Between Fact and Fantasy explores notions of “the East” in the art of the nineteenth century, when globalism, shaped by colonialism and imperialism, fueled unprecedented encounters and exchanges in Europe and the Middle East. Modern forces, such as accelerated travel, rapid technological change, and shifting geopolitics, hastened connections between distant regions and different cultures: “soft power” mingled with “hard power.”

The stories told in this exhibition unfold from Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt in 1798 and culminate in the paintings of the Ottoman polymath Osman Hamdi Bey at the turn of the twentieth century. Islamic artworks made their way to European dealers, collectors, international expositions, and museums, introducing a new visual language to artists, architects, and designers that transformed public and private spaces in the broader Atlantic world. Artists such as Ingres, Delacroix, and Gérôme visited lands and people across the Mediterranean or imagined them from afar. Sometimes they depicted what they saw, at other times they conjured distant places through memory and imagination, often using Islamic objects to stage their paintings.

Orientalism: Between Fact and Fantasy occupies four galleries that straddle the departments of European Paintings and Islamic Art. Visitors are welcome to approach the exhibition from its primary entrance in Gallery 453 or explore its themes from multiple points of entry.