Through April 29, visitors to the Ruth Funk Center for Textile Arts on the campus of Florida Institute of Technology will get a savory taste of the arts and crafts of an all-but-vanished culture. Traditional Arts of the Bedouin is a 58-piece traveling exhibition from the University of Central Missouri. The objects on display – mostly of Saudi Arabian origin, with a couple of pieces from Yemen and Syria – represent a tiny percentage of the more than 2,000 Middle Eastern objects in UCM’s McClure Archives and University Museum.
The collector of those treasures was Paul J. Nance, a Missourian who worked for 35 years for the Saudi Arabian petroleum company Aramco. The Nance Collection, donated to the University of Central Missouri in 2003, is said to be largest of its kind in the U.S.
On exhibit at the Funk are a selection of garments, jewelry and the artifacts of Bedouin hospitality: utensils and vessels employed in the roasting, brewing and serving of coffee. Also on display are objects that relate to the importance of animals – specifically, the camel and the falcon – on the lives of those nomads.
Like the Native American peoples who lived throughout North America, the Bedouin are comprised of distinct tribes that once ruled the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula without respect to the modern division of nations there.
A map near the entrance of the exhibition focuses on Saudi Arabia as the locus for some of the communities and tribes whose artifacts are on view. These include the inhabitants of Unaizah, a city in central Saudi Arabia that was a stopping place for Muslim pilgrims, tribal caravans and international traders; the tribal confederations of the Bani Khalid and the Ajman near the Arabian Gulf; and, in the southwest, the Bani Malik tribe and the once-nomadic population of Najran, a city near the border with Yemen.
For this exhibition, the Funk Center’s L-shaped gallery has been divided into three parts: the first contains objects of wood and metal used in Bedouin daily life; the second gallery features men’s and women’s attire; and the third gallery, which displays a small but stunning collection of Bedouin jewelry, is largely devoted to hands-on educational activities. Tailor-made for Traditional Arts of the Bedouin, the activities gallery is the brainchild of the FIT gallery staff.
“Because it is a traveling show, we wanted to make sure to put our own mark on it,” says Keidra Navaroli, assistant director of the Ruth Funk Center.
In addition to the exhibition’s delightful educational adjunct, the bold graphics (borrowed from Bedouin textile designs) and two camel silhouettes that adorn the gallery walls were the work of the Funk’s Director of Collections, Sarah Smith, and its Assistant Collections Manager, Madeline Sweeney.
Glancing around the first gallery, the visitor might notice the number of objects dedicated to coffee drinking.
“It was interesting to me to learn how much of Bedouin life was dedicated to hospitality,” notes Navaroli.
A visit to a traditional Bedouin home would typically last three days, she says. “The idea being that you are under the protection of the head of the household for as long as you have their food in your stomach,” she adds.
Central to Bedouin hospitality was the elaborate coffee ceremony. Bearing witness to this, a gorgeously beaded and befringed leather pouch for storing the valuable beans is on display, as well as a forged iron coffee-roasting pan with attached rake; nearby, a small wood box into which the hot beans were poured to cool off is satisfyingly charred inside. Three coffee pots, called dallah, are also on display.
Navaroli notes that all the metal work on view – including the women’s silver jewelry – was done by artisans in the towns the Bedouins encountered in their travels. Weaving, a portable craft, was done by Bedouin women.
Examples of weaving on display include two camel bags. One finely woven example was created in 1940, just prior to the industrialization of Saudi Arabia. Next to it, a loosely woven affair with long, messy fringe never saw the side of a camel. That’s because it was made circa 1980, for the western tourist trade.
“There’s the romantic idea that the Bedouin are these iconic nomads, riding on a camel,” says Navaroli, who explains that in the 40 years Paul Nance lived in Saudi Arabia, he saw traditional Bedouin crafts fade away.
“The discovery of oil in 1930 and the industrialization that followed it transformed the country and really affected the way of life for a lot of people living there,” says Navaroli.
Today, the nomadic dependence on the camel for transportation has been replaced by the jeep and the SUV. The camel saddle, camel trapping and camel’s milk serving bowl in the show are things of the past.
“A lot of what you see in this exhibition are essentially dying arts. The weaving, and especially the jewelry – these things simply don’t exist anymore. Not only are the tastes of the people changing, the artisans aren’t there any more to craft them,” Navaroli says.
The second gallery displays clothing for men, women and children, including a well-to-do man’s summer and winter outfits and headgear, as well as women’s colorful pieced and beaded dresses, a black abaya, and a girl’s shawl. (A Bedouin cape and dress on display in the building’s mezzanine are from the Funk’s collection; they are a recent gift of Indian Harbour Beach resident Rosemary Levine.) A woman’s face covering is the oldest object on display. Ornamented with silver coins and commercial shirt buttons, it dates to the 1880s, with later additions.
If you go to view the show’s objects, you will stay for its educational activity center in the third gallery.
There you can relax in a recreated Bedouin tent. Constructed by Melbourne artist Jason Reed, the tent was set up and furnished with pillows and floor and wall coverings by FIT’s Omani Student Association. Two textiles lent by Falasiri Oriental Rugs in Vero Beach add a finishing touch to the inviting display.
At the jewelry station, you can make your own Bedouin baubles from shiny tinfoil strips. Or you can watch a video on Bedouin life, and then compose a Bedouin poem – in English – on a magnetic word board (poetry examples provided). Finally, you can sit a spell and peruse books on Bedouin material culture at a table in the gallery’s center.
According to Navaroli, this show is the right exhibition at the right time. Booked several years in advance, it had originally been scheduled for 2018. Because of a snafu with the exhibition that was supposed to fill the 2017 slot, Traditional Arts of the Bedouin was bumped up.
In an oblique reference to recent U.S. policy regarding the Middle East and immigration, Navaroli says, “We didn’t intend to have this exhibition in response to the current moment.”
“This is a cultural show, and sometimes those can be a little bit intimidating for those who are not familiar with the culture,” she says, adding the Funk Center’s staff does its utmost to give visitors a context for the art on display.
“We brought this exhibition here because we thought it spoke to the diversity of the FIT student body.
“That’s the reason we have this museum here to begin with. We knew we wanted to involve students in some way,” Navaroli says.
She adds that 25 percent to 30 percent of those who attend FIT are international students, many of whom are from Middle Eastern countries.
Perhaps she needn’t have worried; both students and the community at large have welcomed the Bedouin show, with some 200 visitors passing through each week since it opened Jan. 28.
That helps justify Navaroli’s assertion that cultural diversity is not only welcome at FIT, it is the university’s strong suit.
“We are here together as a student body. We are all here together,” she says.
