Opening Reception and Panel Discussion for ‘Turkish Rugs on Tudor Walls’

Join us for the opening reception and panel discussion for “Turkish Rugs on Tudor Walls: 16th-Century Trade between England and the Islamic World” in Mia’s English Tudor Room. This event is FREE and open to the public.

The exhibition explores the lucrative but complicated trade relationship between the Ottoman Empire and England in the 16th and 17th centuries. Household goods from the Ottoman Islamic world were common in English daily life, even as the small, isolated island nation wrestled over doing business with a people it deemed religious enemies. This exhibition examines that fundamental attraction and ambivalence.

A panel discussion will follow the opening reception. The panel will feature Professor Julia Schleck of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, author of Telling True Tales of Islamic Lands: Forms of Mediation in Early English Travel Writing; Ayaan Dahir, community organizer and youth development coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, MN Chapter; and Dr. Tamara Gray, an Islamic scholar with degrees in Islamic sacred texts and subject matters and the founder of Rabata, an organization dedicated to promoting positive cultural change through creative educational experiences.

This event is sponsored by the Consortium for the Study of the Premodern World, the Religious Studies and Islamic Studies Programs, the Department of History, and the Department of Art History at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.

Additional support provided by The Chipstone Foundation.