Despite layoffs and cutbacks, New York’s Met is moving ahead with a plan to renovate and expand it’s Islamic art collection, according to Carol Vogel’s NY Times column:

“Even in these difficult economic circumstances, we’re standing firm to our mission to constantly upgrade our galleries,” said Thomas P. Campbell, director of the Met. […]

The Islamic collection was beautifully installed before, Mr. Campbell said, “but the geopolitical situation unquestionably will place a greater hunger among our visitors to this part of the museum, and it is very much our role to expand the public’s understanding of the extraordinary riches of Islamic art.” Although the new galleries, like the old, will be organized chronologically, they will include thematic sections to reflect new scholarship. […]

The $50 million project, which includes an endowment, already has significant benefactors: Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani, New York philanthropists who have given $10 million toward the new galleries that will be devoted to Safavid and later Persian art. In addition to the actual renovations, their donation will also go toward a new catalog of 350 highlights from the entire Islamic department’s collection and to an endowment to support educational programming centered on Iranian art. […]

The museum will name the gallery after the Mossavar-Rahmanis. (He is chairman of the board of Foxtrot International, an oil and gas company based in Ivory Coast, and chief executive of Mondoil Enterprises, an energy company headquartered in New Mexico. He is also a trustee of the Met. She is a managing director at Goldman Sachs.)

Met Makeover Includes Enlarged Islamic Gallery (New York Times)