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The interwar period witnessed major transformations in the political and social landscape of the modern Muslim world, from new nation states arising in the Middle East to the forging of transregional and diasporic pan-Islamist communities. This session explores the role of art, its makers, and its patrons in expressing and shaping this new world order. What new audiences, networks of collaboration, or material and visual resources became available to Muslim artists during the two world wars and the interwar period (ca. 1914-1945)? How did “Islamic art” as a discipline change during this era, with its validation in universities and museums in the United States, the emergence of scholarly journals such as Ars Islamica, or the organization of public collections of Islamic art outside of Europe? What role did Muslim artists, patrons, or visual practices play in the articulation of national identities, as well as various forms of internationalisms that aimed to promote exchange across regional and national boundaries? Recent efforts to reimagine the disciplinary scope of Islamic art have called for, on the one hand, a close examination of the field’s formation in the nineteenth century and, on the other hand, a reassessment of modern art produced in the postwar and contemporary Middle East. By focusing on the production and reception of Muslim visual cultures during the intervening decades and from a broad geographical perspective, this session aims to enrich our understanding of the history and historiography of Islamic art at a critical moment of global transition.