Aga Khan Museum embraces music to express ‘intangible culture’

To dismiss the Aga Khan Museum’s (AKM) Listening to Art, Seeing Music as unambitious would do a disservice to the difference between a building hung with paintings and the three-year-old Toronto museum’s mission to showcase the enduring art, culture and faith of Muslim peoples around the world. A traditional art museum is about objects. At the AKM, beliefs and ideals are as important as any artifact on display. “As an institution, we deal not just with tangible culture but also with intangible culture,” says Listening to Art, Seeing Music curator Amirali Alibhai, who is also the museum’s head of performing arts. For him, music is the ultimate intangible.