Contemporary art from the Middle East has only begun to emerge from obscurity in the past decade. Its struggle for recognition by the mainstream art world stems from an indefinable hesitation, lack of understanding, and the absence of established standards by which to evaluate it. A handful of major museums have started to collect this art seriously, while others continue to resist such acquisitions, often dismissing them as derivative and of questionable quality. Two recent exhibitions that focused on contemporary art from the Middle East and helped to put it on the map were Without Boundary: 17 Ways of Looking, organized by Fereshteh Daftari at the Museum of Modern Art, and Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East, curated by Venetia Porter at the British Museum. Without Boundary was an intimate show, featuring thirty-four works in a wide array of media ranging from painting and calligraphy to animation and cartoon by seventeen established artists of diverse backgrounds mostly active outside their countries of origin—yet all with ties to the Islamic world. The works of two U.S. artists, Bill Viola and Mike Kelley, were included to illustrate the fluidity and reciprocity of Islamic art across geographical and cultural boundaries...