"From the Louvre: Masterpieces of Islamic Art" opens Saturday at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, bringing 26 objects from the Louvre's Islamic art collection to the United States for the first time. The exhibition, running through January 18, 2027, is billed as a first-of-its-kind loan from the Paris museum's holdings, which rarely travel as a group.
The works span roughly 12 centuries and a geography stretching from Spain to India, including paintings, metalwork, jade, ceramics, glass and architectural elements produced across the Umayyad, Mamluk, Ottoman and Mughal courts. The exhibition's marquee piece is the Baptistery of Saint Louis, a hammered copper-alloy basin inlaid with gold, silver and niello, made around 1320 to 1340 in Mamluk Syria or Egypt by the coppersmith Muhammad ibn al-Zayn. Despite the name, the basin has no real connection to the French king it was later associated with; it became a royal baptismal vessel only centuries after it was made.
Objects With Layered Histories
Other highlights include the Lion of Monzón, a bronze sculpture from Islamic Spain dating to the 10th or 11th century, carved rosewood doors, jade drinking cups and a monumental Persian court portrait. Many of the pieces were originally functional objects made for elite households before being absorbed into European royal and church collections, then eventually into the Louvre's holdings.
The show is co-curated by Souraya Noujaim, director of the Louvre's Islamic art department, and Simon Rettig, associate curator for the arts of the Islamic world at the National Museum of Asian Art. Rettig has said the exhibition was designed to move past a monolithic overview of Islamic art, framing the objects instead around how they accumulated meaning through the hands they passed through and the journeys they took across centuries and borders.
The partnership reflects a broader pattern of major encyclopedic museums lending signature holdings abroad for extended runs, giving American audiences rare access to objects that normally anchor permanent galleries in Paris. For the Smithsonian, landing a Louvre loan of this scale adds to a busy season for Washington's museum scene, alongside other exhibitions opening across the city this fall.
The exhibition occupies Galleries 23 and 24 of the museum's East Building on the National Mall, with general admission to the Smithsonian free, as is standard across the institution's Washington museums. It is scheduled to run through mid-January before the objects return to the Louvre's permanent galleries in Paris.
