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In fall 2022, Islamic art history made international headlines. A Hamline University student complained about a fourteenth-century Islamic manuscript painting of the Prophet Muhammad shown in an art history survey class. Subsequently, Hamline University administrators opted not to renew the lecturer’s contract, describing the display of the image as “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful, and Islamophobic.” Fast-forward to March 2023 and Florida parents lambasted Michelangelo’s statue of David as “pornographic,” demanding its removal from the curriculum and leading to the school principal’s ousting. One month later, in April 2023, yet another image brouhaha arose around the Asia Society Art Museum’s exhibition Comparative Hell: Arts of the Asian Underworlds, whose Islamic paintings that included depictions of the Prophet were blurred in an online virtual tour—a digital effacement recalling the physical removal of an Iranian representation of Muhammad from the galleries of the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam several years ago. These image-related fiascos and the iconoclastic responses they have engendered reveal an enduring undercurrent of anxiety produced by visual images.

This panel brings together scholars and curators, who often found themselves at the very heart of these crises, to reflect on what’s at stake for the teaching and display of not only Islamic artworks but global artistic heritage more broadly. The panelists thus connect Art History’s sub-fields while concurrently de-otherizing Islamic art as if it were a “special case.” They also share their experiences and approaches to engaging the full spectrum of images—their meanings, ambivalences, and pitfalls—in our charged contemporary climate.