YANNICK LINTZ, Ph.D. in Achaemenid History, from Sorbonne University, has been director of the Islamic Art Department in the Louvre Museum since 2013. Those last years were mainly devoted to museum studies in Islamic art and history of Islamic collectors. As member of the scientific committee of the agency France Museums in charge of working for the Louvre Abu Dhabi museum project, she trained French curators on the idea of a global history museum from the point of view of the Islamic world. She has become known as an art historian of the Middle East, with a focus on the transition between late antiquity and the beginning of Islam, through the city of Antinoe, Egypt. Recently, she has created the PAPSI program focused on safeguarding endangered cultural heritage in Syria and Iraqi through scientific archives survey. She also curated in 2014 the medieval Morocco exhibition held in the Louvre, also shown in the Mohamed VI Modern Art Museum in Rabat, Morocco in 2015.

The Louvre Museum has nearly 20,000 works of art from the Islamic world representing 12 centuries of Islamic history and art from a territory that stretches from Spain to India. Religious objects, particularly those from mosques or depicting them, account for a large part of the collection. The focus of this presentation is twofold. First, I will attempt to retell the stories that led these works from the mosque one day to the Louvre. Then I will talk about how these objects are presented to the millions of visitors from all cultures and religions to help them better understand and appreciate these works and their associated cultures.