Jenkins–Madina, Marilyn 1940-

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Jenkins-Madina, Marilyn 1940-

PERSONAL:

Born 1940.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 5th Ave., New York, NY 10028-0198.

CAREER:

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, department of Islamic art, 1964-2004, curator emerita of Islamic art, 2004—.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Islamic Art in the Kuwait National Museum: The Al-Sabah Collection, Sotheby (London, England), 1983.

(With Manuel Keene) Islamic Jewelry in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), 1983.

(With Richard Ettinghausen and Oleg Grabar) Islamic Art and Architecture 650-1250, 2nd edition, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2001.

Raqqa Revisited: Ceramics of Ayyubid Syria, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Marilyn Jenkins-Madina is an expert on Islamic art, architecture, and jewelry. In Islamic Art and Architecture 650-1250, written with Richard Ettinghausen and Oleg Grabar, she looks at a wide variety of artworks and architectural accomplishments from North Africa, Spain, and the Middle East. The book covers items such as jewelry, books, textiles, ceramics, buildings, and other forms of art. The authors also trace the growth and development of art centers throughout the geographic area of the Islamic world.

With Raqqa Revisited: Ceramics of Ayyubid Syria, Jenkins-Madina provides a scholarly study of ceramics from Raqqa, a significant Islamic city located in what is now Syria. This Middle Eastern city grew into prominence in the eighth century and was destroyed in 1265; during its heyday it was a major center for the creation of ceramics and other artworks. In the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, wealthy collectors began buying items from Raqqa and elsewhere, inspired by interest in the Middle East and by translations of works such as One Thousand and One Nights. Through these channels, many items created in Raqqa made their way into American museums and collections. Writing in Library Journal, Stephen Allen Patrick called Raqqa Revisited a "remarkable, well-documented, and scholarly work" covering Raqqa ceramic collections in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The author provides a detailed historical overview of the geographical region Raqqa, then concentrates on exploring the background of the Raqqa ceramics themselves. Jenkins-Madina also remarks on the physical characteristics of the ceramics, and she describes how they are analyzed, techniques for dating them, and methods for determining their provenance. Patrick called the book a "well-organized and easy-to-use work."