The Louvre in Paris is lending 26 works from its Islamic art collection to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA) in Washington, DC, for a single-venue exhibition opening this autumn. "From the Louvre: Masterpieces of Islamic Art" runs from 26 September to 18 January 2027, and Washington will be its only stop. The Art Newspaper

The loaned works span the 7th century to the 19th century and a territory stretching from present-day Spain to India. Paintings, ceramics, metalwork, jade, glass and architectural elements are all in the mix. The Louvre holds one of the world's finest Islamic art collections; the NMAA, for its part, counts more than 2,200 objects of Islamic art among its own holdings — among the largest such collections in the United States. NMAA

Several pieces have never been shown in the United States before. Among them is the "Lion of Monzón," a bronze statue from Islamic Spain dated to the 10th or 11th century, and a large decorated ceramic Ottoman bowl from around 1480. A 14th-century engraved Mamluk brass basin known as the "Baptistery of Saint Louis" — in Europe since before the Louvre Palace opened as a museum in 1793 — is also travelling.

The exhibition traces each object's journey from its place of origin, and several carry diplomatic histories that read like itineraries. Two bejewelled ivory pen cases commissioned by the 17th-century Mughal emperor Jahangir were gifted to Safavid shah Abbas I and his grand vizier, then acquired by Louis Cartier in 1912. An 18th-century oil portrait of the Persian ruler Fath-Ali Shah Qajar was given to Napoleon as a diplomatic gift. A Mamluk metal vase once belonged to Pope Urban VIII in the 17th century. The Art Newspaper

What ties the exhibition together is its exploration of the word "masterpiece" itself. The co-curator, Simon Rettig, the NMAA's associate curator for the arts of the Islamic world, and the exhibition team work from the Islamic concept of tuhfa — objects of extraordinary craftsmanship — to ask how these works came to be considered exceptional across different cultural contexts. The framing is as much about reception as about creation: who treasured what, and why, at the moment of making and in the centuries since. The Art Newspaper

NMAA director Chase F. Robinson described some of the loaned works as "absolutely the most iconic" in the Louvre's Islamic collection. The show is co-curated with Rettig, and runs in the museum's Washington galleries for nearly four months.