Orientalism: Between Fact and Fantasy

Orientalism: Between Fact and Fantasy illuminates artistic encounters and exchanges between distant regions and different cultures at a time of accelerated travel, rapid technological change, and shifting geopolitics.

From June 12, 2026, to February 28, 2027, the featured exhibition at The Met is focused on cross-cultural encounters in Europe and the Middle East during a period of growing imperialism and colonialism.
Orientalism: Between Fact and Fantasy presents works of art traditionally identified as Orientalist in conversation with objects from the Middle East, fostering a deeper understanding of the contexts of exchange between cultures, beginning with Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt in 1798 and culminating in an exploration of the French-trained Ottoman painter Osman Hamdi Bey (1842–1910). It highlights the traditions of Islamic art and culture that transfixed our 19th-century forebears, alongside European and American creations, exploring complex issues surrounding influence and cultural appropriation. The exhibition is the first at The Met dedicated to Orientalism and the first major collaboration between the Departments of European Paintings and Islamic Art.

The exhibition is made possible by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, Alice Cary Brown and W. L. Lyons Brown, and the Hagop Kevorkian Fund.
Additional support is provided by the Janice H. Levin Fund and an Anonymous Foundation.

The exhibition features exceptional paintings, drawings, photographs, illustrated books, architecture, arms and armor, textiles, garments, glassware, ceramics, and metalwork. Highlighting the plenitude of The Met’s holdings, it presents approximately 180 objects from 12 Met departments enriched by rarely seen loans from the United States and abroad, all displayed in new and stimulating contexts. The exhibition occupies four galleries that straddle the Departments of European Paintings and Islamic Art. Visitors are welcome to approach the exhibition from its primary entrance in Gallery 453 or explore its themes from any other point of entry.

Exhibition co-curator Maryam Ekhtiar, Patti Cadby Birch Curator of Islamic Art, said, “In the 19th century, Persian art and culture held a mesmerizing sway over the imaginations of Europeans and Americans, including writers, translators, poets, artists, craftsmen, architects, designers, and even composers, who regarded Persia (present-day Iran) as an unmatched wellspring of creativity and refinement, inspiring a vast body of literature, visual art, and music. Visitors to the exhibition will learn that this tendency was so pervasive that many designers and manufacturers marketed their creations as ‘Persian,’ regardless of where they were actually made.”

Orientalism: Between Fact and Fantasy unfolds in four sections that demonstrate how, during a period of profound transformation and modernization, Islamic works of art were brought to European dealers, collectors, international expositions, and museums, sparking a new design grammar in Europe and the broader Atlantic world.

During the same period, artists such as Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), John Frederick Lewis (1804–1876), Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824– 1904), and John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) visited the lands and people across the Mediterranean or imagined them from afar.
They sometimes depicted what they saw and, at other times, conjured distant places through memory and imagination, often using Islamic objects to stage paintings in their studios.
The parameters of the exhibition expand beyond easel painting to focus on reformers such as architect Owen Jones (1809– 1874) and leading designers Edward C. Moore (1827–1891) and Philippe-Joseph Brocard (1831–1896), who admired and experimented with motifs, designs, materials, forms, and techniques mastered in the Islamic world for centuries.

The exhibition brings to light artistic dialogues across media, revealing that Europeans, Americans, Ottomans, and other Middle Easterners all contributed to the framing of an increasingly interconnected world.

Exhibition co-curator Deniz Beyazit, Curator of Islamic Art, said: “A critical component of the exhibition is balancing Western perspectives with those from the Islamic world. One of the true discoveries for most visitors to the exhibition will be the section on Osman Hamdi Bey, one of the 19th century’s most intriguing and complex figures. For the first time, a significant group of his rarely seen paintings will be displayed alongside those by Gérôme and other contemporaries. Such a novel juxtaposition will reveal that, more than any 19th-century artist, Hamdi represented modern cosmopolitan life in the Ottoman Empire from an insider’s perspective.
His pictures offer an eye-opening response to the exoticized and stereotyped portrayals of ‘the East’ created by generations of European Orientalist painters.”

The Alhambra: Gateway to Orientalism

During the 19th century, the Alhambra, a Nasrid-period (1232–1492) palace complex in Granada, Spain, emerged as an alluring center of travel and study. Though located in southwestern Europe, al-Andalus was often the first stop for Europeans and Americans on their tour of “the Orient,” due to the region’s Islamic history. As a result, the Alhambra became a “gateway to the East.” By mid-century, fascination with the Alhambra had inspired artists and writers around the world.
In the 1830s, it increasingly became the subject of scholarly studies. The beauty of the Alhambra’s architecture added to its appeal and led to an international Alhambresque style, often called “Moresque” or “Moorish” at the time, and the Alhambra’s Court of the Lions and Comares Palace became a preferred setting for Orientalist paintings. Images made by early photographers further heightened the allure of this “exotic” site.

Hard and Soft Power:
Orientalism and Design

International expositions during the 19th century, designed to showcase progress, political supremacy, and national identity and culture, helped stimulate interest in Islamic art. As a result, European and American architects, artists, designers, and manufacturers had greater contact with the people and cultures of the Islamic world and developed a deep admiration for its techniques and forms. Islamic styles were perceived as novel, filling a perceived aesthetic void in “the West.” Architects, artists, and designers revived historic techniques and emulated the arts of the East, often creating imaginative reinterpretations rather than direct copies. These novel objects transformed everyday life in the West by providing alternatives to industrialization and mass production: what the British architect Owen Jones called the “Age of Ugliness.”

Facing the Orient

Visitors are invited to explore works of art that document encounters between people who moved between Europe and the Middle East. Each image in this section is a portrayal of one or more people, and all are marked by the circumstances that brought artist and subject together. In the European tradition, a “likeness” records an individual’s appearance; a “portrait” provides more context about the sitter; and a “type” prioritizes qualities associated with a group to which the individual belongs. In many of the pictures here, the nuances of these categories may seem to overlap. Nineteenth-century artists were deeply engaged by the possibilities of portraying people of “the Orient” and the abundance of techniques and materials with which to work, from painting to photography.

Osman Hamdi Bey:
Depicting the Orient as an Insider

A section dedicated to the Ottoman polymath Osman Hamdi Bey demonstrates how exchange between “East” and “West” in the 19th century did not consist solely of Westerners looking east. Osman Hamdi Bey was an administrator of antiquities and a French-trained painter who developed a personal style to depict his world through an insider’s lens. His bold, warm colors, decorative elements, and close-up views are reminiscent of Ottoman art and painting, while also conveying a contemporary sensibility. His compositions combine academic polish with liberal brushwork and embrace various artistic traditions: Orientalist, Ottoman, and modern. Hamdi’s compositions pushed the boundaries of Orientalism in the West, while in the East, they transformed and modernized Ottoman painting.

Exhibition Dates: June 12, 2026–February 28, 2027

Exhibition Location: The Met Fifth Avenue
Visit: metmuseum.org