The Aga Khan Museum: An oasis on the outskirts of Toronto

The Aga Khan Museum: An oasis on the outskirts of Toronto

North Americas first museum for Islamic art is a stunner and something of an outsider. Given its mission, thats just fine.

By Adrian Lee, Macleans Magazine, September 9, 2014

An aerial photo of the Aga Khan Museum and the Ismaili Centre, an oasis amid highways and high-rises. ( Kalloon Photography)

Theres something inherently urban and urbane about museums, and thats certainly the case in Toronto. The Royal Ontario Museum, with its stern, Romanesque Revival mien juxtaposed with its new crystal addition, divides the red-brick varsity distinction of the University of Toronto on its west from the swish modern Bloor Street shopping strip to its the east. Meanwhile, the ever-evolving Art Gallery of Ontario reflects its place, all modern lines and glass facades designed by Frank Gehry sitting wedged between the up-and-coming Baldwin Village neighbourhood and the clattering bustle of Chinatown. Both those institutionsalongside smaller museums like the Bata Shoe Museum, Casa Loma, Design Exchange, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, the Museum of Inuit Art, et alare thoroughly central downtown engagements.

So in that way, already, the Aga Khan Museumset to open on Sept. 18 as North Americas first monument to Islamic art, and founded by its namesake, the founder of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) and imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslimsis an outsider. The museum, a gleaming white Brazilian granite crown, is just off the Don Valley Parkway in a suburb eight kilometres outside of the city proper, a good half-hour bus ride from the nearest subway station. Nearby, retirement towers with neat gardens and shiny high-rises stand like obelisks amid a modernist bloc of corporate offices of either sallow taupe or glittering blue.

But that distance, and its distinction from its surroundings, is all part of the museums appeal. The idea of an oasisthe sense that, once you enter it, youre in a different placeis very much a part of the overall desire, said Henry Kim, the museums director. He cites Al-Azhar Park in Cairoanother AKDN projectas a place that takes you outside the stresses of the big city. Its amazingsuddenly, your day changes from being in the middle of noise and crowds, and suddenly youre in an open space.

Toronto was the second choice for the museums locationplanning permissions squashed plans to build it in London, on a prime downtown plot just outside the Palace of Westminsterbut now, the pleasure of this open 6.8-hectare campus is what drives the museums sensibility, and the amount of space informs the buildings design by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki, hand-picked by the Aga Khan. With the lush gardens and the five burbling reflective pools outside its front door and its inner-sanctum open-air courtyard, entered from inside the building and ringed by walls of glass and wooden latticework so that light from outside projects dancing shadows into the museum over the course of the day, it is clear that this is a labour of love.

Click this link to read the rest of the article, and see a slide show of the museum:

http://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/the-aga-khan-museum-an-oasis-on-the-outskirts-of-toronto/?gallery_page=1#mobile_gallery_top