A Thematic Exhibition for the 50th Anniversary of the Museum’s Founding, Lines and Dots: The Aesthetic Journey of Arabic Calligraphy

A calligrapher’s workshop in Cairo.
The banner reads “Welcome to the
National Museum of Ethnology” in Arabic
(Photo by Aymon Kreil, Egypt, 2023)

Exhibition Period	Thursday, March 13, 2025 – Tuesday, June 17, 2025
Location	Thematic Exhibition Hall, National Museum of Ethnology
Hours	10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (Entry is permitted until 4:30 p.m.)
Closed on	Wednesdays
Admission Fee	Adults ¥580, and college/ university students ¥250, senior high school and elementary and junior high school students Free ▶ Details
Presented by	the National Museum of Ethnology

Exhibition Outline

This thematic exhibition traces the transformation and rebirth of Arabic calligraphy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We have selected the artefacts which would narrate the story of how this artistic tradition has acquired a renewed value in the mediatised world where a large volume of written communication is now done digitally. With the advent of mass media, such as print, photography and motion pictures, demand for highly skilled calligraphers increased dramatically. The invention of Arabic computer fonts of the 1980s was the game changer. With digitisation, anybody could type and reproduce highly legible Arabic letters without expense. But what appeared as a loss gave some calligraphers the impetus to transform themselves from an artisan to an artist.