Abstract
The recent exhibition, “Reverberating Echoes: Contemporary Art Inspired by Traditional Islamic Art,” organized
by the Center for the Arts & Religion at the Graduate Theological union afforded an opportunity for me as curator
to reconsider the definition of ‘traditional Islamic art.’ This effort led to the identification of an algorithmic
aesthetic of pattern that characterizes artistic production in all media from the 9th through the 12th centuries in what
were then Islamic lands, centered in Baghdad, but extending from Spain across North Africa through the Middle
East and Iran to Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent.
