Collection as Collage: the Doris Duke Collection of Islamic Art
The five acre Shangri La estate in Honolulu, Hawaii is an assemblage of
architecture and art inspired by Islamic iconography, bequeathed by tobacco heiress Doris
Duke (1912-1993) to the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art (DDFIA). Now open to
the public, the display takes a vast collection of individual pieces purchased or
commissioned by Duke and presents the works as she experienced them during her
seasonal residency in this Pacific island home. Duke’s objective was to create a personal
retreat from the “unwanted publicity that came with being one of the wealthiest women in
the world” (DDCF Home).
The estate houses 3,500 pieces from a broad range of Islamic
sources in a 14,000-square-foot home overlooking Diamond Head. Duke’s inheritance
made it possible for her to develop her collection over six decades, from the inception of
the project, about 1937, until her death. It is hardly the typical setting for ‘museum pieces,’
and the works are positioned -- in use -- in a purely secular context, not isolated in display
cases. As a result, the aggregate of items creates a unique whole greater than the sum of the
individual pieces, and highlights broad issues with respect to collection.
American Doris Duke was born in 1912 and became the principal heir of her
father’s $50 million fortune at age 12, providing her with “rare independence for a woman
of her time” (Littlefield 3). Shortly after she had access to the fortune, at 21, she married
James Cromwell. Their honeymoon took them on a world tour where Duke “developed a
passion for Islamic art,” although Brier notes she had been exposed to it as a child through
Arthur Upham Pope, a family friend and Persian art promoter who subsequently helped her
make many of her acquisitions (Stewart 2; Brier xiv). The honeymoon tour’s final stop
saw the newlyweds in Hawaii where the island’s “climate, informality and remoteness” so
appealed to Duke that she extended her stay to four months and bought the undeveloped
Honolulu property. She began to work with architect Marion Sims Wyeth, overruling his
initial proposal of an imposing mansion in favour of a lower profile, rambling structure. Its
entry façade (exhibit 1) includes an unremarkable entrance, a “plain one-story plaster wall
bisected by a dark wooden door”, giving no indication of the luxurious interior behind it
(Stewart, 3). The interior of the building, while substantially completed by 1938,
underwent continuous renovations to accommodate Duke’s on-going acquisitions,
© Susan Magnusson 2010
prompting one friend to quip that “there was no such word as finished” (Littlefield 29). But
throughout the home’s evolution, Littlefield notes that Duke consistently followed three
principles: the building did not overwhelm the surrounding environment, it radiated around
an interior courtyard, and it provided ocean views from most rooms (19). Within this
setting, Duke arranged (and re-arranged) her collection, blurring the distinction between
interior and exterior, and incorporating her finds within the designed space for every day,
albeit luxurious, domestic life.
The art Duke chose included items from the “early period of Islamic expansion in
the seventh century, to works produced in the twentieth century,” representing Asian,
African and European lands where Islamic culture first took hold (Littlefield, 35). The
greatest concentration in the collection is among pieces from the seventeenth through
nineteenth centuries in “wood, paper, precious and semiprecious stone, glass, ceramic,
metal and fibre” mediums (ibid). Whether these pieces are hung on walls or built into
them, the result is art “embedded within the estate [truly defining] Shangri La’s unique
character” (Littlefield 31). On an individual basis, the pieces Duke collected lie largely
“outside the canon of what is typically considered a masterpiece” although she had the
means to collect masterpieces, had she chosen to (Littlefield 46). The breadth of items
acknowledges both religious and non-religious applications of Islamic design. Despite the
secular context of Duke’s displays, script from the Quran appears throughout the house, on
ceramics and illuminated manuscripts, including a Kufic style parchment from about 900
C.E. (exhibit 3). Shangri La’s rooms are not organized by type of work or era. Brier notes
“it is a fabricated environment, unconstrained by taxonomies and organizing principles of
museum exhibitions and academic discipline” (xvii). Duke “combined and recombined the
works of art into … a mixture that suited her aesthetic sense. The resulting display
juxtaposes colors, media, and scale, allowing each object to be seen for its individual merits
at the same time that it contributed to the overall mood of a room” (Littlefield 39-40).
According to Stewart, the prize of the collection is a mihrab from Veramin, Iran
created in 1265 C.E. (exhibit 2). The prayer niche is made of lustre tiles and is signed by
an Abi Tahir family member, part of the premiere line of Kashan potters. Duke purchased
the mihrab in 1940 and had it installed off the living room. It does not point to Mecca,
© Susan Magnusson 2010
confirming that the work was valued more for its visual aesthetic than its religious
significance. Still, Duke was keenly aware of this piece’s importance and had it removed
from the room shortly after the bombing of Pearl Habor, protecting the mihrab in the
basement of the home until the end of World War II. Ceramic vessels and tiles, like those
in the prayer niche, comprise about one fifth of the collection, highlighted by “mina’i type
bowls made in medieval Iran, fifteenth-century lusterware vessels from Spain, and Iznik
plates produced in sixteenth century Turkey” (Littlefield 35). Duke relocated other
architectural features from Islamic centers, mixing “centuries and continents at will,” even
repurposing objects (Stewart 4). For example, she purchased marble jalis lattice screens:
while their traditional application would have been to shield female members of a royal
household from outsiders’ eyes, the screens were incorporated into the Shangri La master
bedroom to provide both security and air flow to the sleeping area.
At Duke’s death, Shangri La transitioned to a more public venue under the Doris
Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF). Its mission is to improve the quality of life through
a range of grants, including the “preservation of the cultural and environmental legacy of
Doris Duke's properties” (DDCF, Home). Shangri La now offers scheduled tours as well as
residencies for artists and scholars. In 2009, this included Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom
who wrote on colour in Islamic cultures during their appointment (DDCF, Web
Residencies). In comparison to more traditional museums, Duke’s 3,500 piece collection is
larger than most holdings outside the Islamic world. The Los Angeles County Museum’s
Islamic Art section holds about 1,700 pieces; the Smithsonian 2,200 objects in its Freer and
Sackler Galleries (Komaroff 1; Smithsonian 1). Duke’s pieces were meticulously tracked
with respect to her costs, including shipping, but “she did not see fit to label the works with
historical or cultural data” (Brier xvii). As a result, scholars may now identify items in the
collection of interest for their previously ignored provenance as, conversely, the DDFIA
has already identified items which are not what they were purported to be. This is not
surprising according to Watson, particularly with respect to ceramics where “fakes and
forgeries beset … Islamic pottery to an extent unsurpassed in other ceramic histories”
(Watson, 46). Regardless, the Duke collection at Shangri La is an extraordinary example of
collecting, with consequences particular to Duke’s vision.
© Susan Magnusson 2010
First, on the negative side, Duke’s accumulations are first and foremost a personal
collection. She bought works of art “for the pleasure they gave her and not for their
potential social prestige or monetary value” (Littlefield 46). However, as such, Duke’s
collection has some alarming affinity with the proverbial souvenir teaspoon rack. Both the
spoons and Duke’s art are personally driven collections where, from an anthropological
point of view, a set of “objects (is) kept temporarily or permanently out of the economic
circuit, afforded special protection in enclosed places adapted specifically for that purpose
and put on display” (Pomian 162). Clearly, Duke’s collecting takes the pastime to an
entirely different level than teaspoons from Niagara Falls, but if a collector is focused on
personal gratification, perhaps that’s the only significant difference, even if the collector
gives some serious thought to who will inherit the items.
Second, Duke’s collecting removed religious objects from their original context and
placed them in a secular environment. This recontextualizing should at least be noted in an
era of political correctness, although it is difficult to collect things without doing so. “To
treat an object as a collectable is to take it out of its natural or original context and to create
a new context for it, that of the collector’s own life-space and the juxtaposition with other
items in the collection” (Danet 160). If items in Duke’s collection are rare or one of a kind,
like the mihrab, concern for this kind of collecting may be legitimate, moreso if the
collector limits access to the work.
Third, Shangri La’s setting, while serving the collector’s needs, may not have
served the collection’s. The DDCF acknowledges that the open-air, ocean front site creates
“many preservation challenges including humidity and temperature fluctuations, insect
activity, and marine salts that corrode metals and saturate organic materials” (DDCF,
Restoration). Restoration and conservation are now key elements of the DDCF’s work at
Shangri La and will continue to be while the collection remains intact in situ.
Fourth, the Duke collection incorporates many pieces into each of its spaces so that
there is a danger the individual art is visually lost, overwhelmed by the impact of the
composite. Traditional museums may focus our attention on the achievements of a single
hand in a single work of art, displayed so that we can more fully appreciate its every
nuance. Anyone concerned with recontextualizing and the dearth of didactics will likely
© Susan Magnusson 2010
find the aggregation in Shangri La a third, alarming step away from an appreciation of the
individual piece.
Fifth, in creating a retreat inspired by diverse Islamic pieces, Duke has mustered
substantial resources to construct a physical reality that only exists in Shangri La. Through
inclusion (of real and fake pieces) and through omission (temporal, geographic and of
mediums), she gives substance to a fabricated culture. This may mislead others to see her
world as a reflection of reality, a charge Western museums face when they “misrepresent or
even invent foreign cultures” (Duncan 280).
Moving away from the negative, Duke’s achievements at Shangri La have two
noteworthy results best described as ‘neutral’. If Islamic Art defies being slotted into the
Western construct of a continuum from ‘fine art’ to ‘craft’, Duke’s multi-medium
composite of Islamic pieces completely befuddles such Western thinking. The architectural
display of her collection is, in one sense, pure fine art, creating dramatic space throughout
the building and its grounds. The definition of artist is similarly non-Western: items
embedded in Shangri La may be the work of a single hand while other pieces were crafted
by groups of skilled people. In terms both of mediums and creators, the Duke collection
does not fit the Western model.
This situation is compounded on a second front where Duke pushes traditional
boundaries. Her primary role may be as ‘the collector’, but Duke also ordered custom
made pieces for Shangri La, thereby acting as a patron of current artists. Then, she “not
only acquired large quantities of materials, but (was) intimately involved in decisions
pertaining to their installation and display,” playing a creative role in the positioning of
each item she chose (Brier xix). In these instances, the collector also became an artist.
Despite the potential pitfalls of Duke’s approach, and the interesting wrinkles her
multi-faceted participation created, the Shangri La collection stands as a testament to one
woman’s vision, with three specific strengths.
First, Duke’s vision is dynamic: items at Shangri La are displayed ‘in use’,
carefully positioned with an appreciation for their aesthetic value. Unlike museum settings,
Duke’s Shangri La did not require its contents to lose their “usage value, if one is of the
© Susan Magnusson 2010
opinion that (their) ability to decorate constitutes such a value.” (Pomian, 162) Duke lived
and interacted with her richly embellished surroundings.
Second, by removing pieces from their original context, it’s likely that Duke’s
displays touch viewers based on a more purely visual aesthetic, emphasizing the quality of
line, colour, texture and craft over any symbolic meaning each work originally conveyed.
While we can appreciate them for their religious or cultural significance, it is their presence
in the home as pieces of art, first and foremost, that strikes the viewer.
Third, by blurring the lines between indoor and outdoor, and creating a structure
that emphasizes harmony with nature, Shangri La evokes a strong element of spirituality.
The objects in the collection may be physically removed from their original cultural
millieu, and sometimes religious origins, but Duke used them to create a peaceful retreat
that reflects a similar spiritual aesthetic.
Industrialist and collector John Paul Getty contended that “the collector reflects
much of his innermost self, his convictions, attitudes and outlooks in what he collects (13).”
If that’s the case, then Doris Duke was clearly an independent woman, charting her own
course off the beaten path of European masterpieces followed by her male contemporaries.
Her hands-on approach to creating and managing her collection of Islamic art produced a
unique result as noteworthy for its collage-like form and her multi-faceted role in its
creation as for its content.
***
© Susan Magnusson 2010
Works Cited
Danet, Brenda and Tamar Katriel. “No two alike: play and aesthetics in collecting.”
Pearce, 160-174.
Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF). “History of Shangri La.” Shangri La – A
Center for Islamic Arts and Cultures. 2010. Web. June, 2010.
Getty, J. Paul with Jean Charbonneaux et al. “The Joys of Collecting.” London: Country
Life Limited, 1966.
Littlefield, Sharon. Doris Duke’s Shangri La. Japan: Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic
Art, 2002. Web. April, 2010.
Pearce, Susan, ed. Interpreting Objects and Collections. New York: Routledge, 1994.
Print.
Pomian, Krzysztof. “The collection: between the visible and the invisible.” Pearce, 160174.
Stewart, Doug. “Doris Duke’s Islamic Island Retreat.” Smithsonian, Vol. 34, Issue 12
(March 2004), 70-79. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost. 28 April 28, 2010.
Watson, Oliver. Ceramics from Islamic Lands. London: Thames & Hudson, 2004.
Work Consulted
Spitta, Sylvia. Misplaced Objects: Migrating Collections and Recollections in Europe and
the Americas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009.
© Susan Magnusson 2010
Exhibit 1
Shangri La
Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.
Main Entrance
Courtesy of the Doris Duke Foundation for
Islamic Art
(Photo by David Franzen)
Exhibit 2
Mihrab (prayer niche)
Date: dated Sha'ban 663 A.H. (May 1265 A.D.)
Culture: Iran (Kashan)
Period: Ilkhanid period
Dimensions: Overall: 151 3/8 x 90 x 8 1/2 in. (384.5 x 228.6 x 21.6cm)
Medium: Stonepaste, overglaze painted with luster
Courtesy of the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art
(Photo by Shuzo Uemoto)
Exhibit 3
Folio from the Quran, Sura 9,
"Repentance" (al-Tauba), verses 31-32
Date: ca. 900
Culture: Near East or North Africa
Dimensions: Overall: 4 1/8 x 6 1/8 in.
(10.5 x 15.6cm)
Medium: Inks and pigment on parchment
Courtesy of the Doris Duke Foundation for
Islamic Art
(Photo by Shuzo Uemoto)
© Susan Magnusson 2010