Cooper Hewitt

“Shahzia Sikander Selects: Works from the Permanent Collection,” the ninth installment in an exhibition series devoted to showing rotations of the museum’s holdings, will be on view from March 6, 2009, and continue through Sept. 7, 2009, at the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Internationally acclaimed artist Shahzia Sikander will mine and interpret the museum’s collection and produce an installation of the selected objects. A highlight of the exhibition will be a new work created by Sikander, inspired by Cooper-Hewitt’s collection.

Trained at the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan, Sikander merges the traditional South Asian art of miniature painting with contemporary forms and styles. Her work, which ranges from intimate watercolors and multilayered paper installations to mural-sized wall paintings and digital animation, explores the relationship between the present and the past and the richness of multicultural identities.

“As an artist who blends Eastern and Western imagery, Sikander brings a singular perspective to exploring the museum’s collection,” said director Paul Warwick Thompson. “This is the ninth rotation in the series and, each time, the guest curator’s selections and viewpoints on collection works are fresh and wholly unexpected.”

To personally engage with the objects in Cooper-Hewitt’s collection, Sikander first looked to Indian and Persian miniature painting from the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery—sister units in the Smithsonian Institution focused on Asian art—and used these as a lens through which to focus her selections.

At Cooper-Hewitt, Sikander chose a unique range of works from all four collecting departments and the National Design Library. Through the installation of the selected work, Sikander seeks to elicit a new visual read on the works, revealing surprising nuances and details and unveiling layers of meaning. “Discovering relationships among the works is a creative process, and it is my hope that viewers will also share in it,” said Sikander. “The purpose is not to confine a read, but to leave space for anticipation and reinterpretation.”