DYNASTIES LACMA'S 'GENGHIS KHAN' EXHIBIT RECONSIDERS MONGOLS' CONQUEST OF WESTERN ASIA IN LIGHT OF ITS ARTISTIC LEGACY.

Byline: Steven Rosen Correspondent

Recent events make it easier for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to convince the public that its new show, featuring rare artifacts from Islamic Asia, contains important and irreplaceable art.

After looters ransacked and destroyed the National Museum of Iraq following the fall of Baghdad, many people came to realize the value and legacy of historic objects from that region.

``The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256-1353,'' which runs through July 27, features material more recent than the art so shockingly plundered in Baghdad. But it still is very much about that region's place in world history - and culture.

The exhibition features some 200 objects, including textiles with detailed patterns; decorative glazed tiles that once lined buildings like a shiny second skin; candlesticks, footed cups and jewelry made of precious metals, including gold; and painted pages from surviving illustrated manuscripts of the period.

The exhibition was culled by Linda Komaroff, LACMA's Islamic art curator, and Stefano Carboni, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It first showed at the Met.

Although Islamic Western Asia - with its cultural capital in Baghdad - survived the Crusades, it fell to Genghis Khan in the 13th century. The Mongols at first brought widespread destruction but - and this is the exhibition's premise - eventually encouraged an artistic flowering with lasting results. The making of textiles advanced, and there were breakthroughs in drawing and painting.

This occurred once Genghis Khan's grandson, Hulegu, created the Ilkhanid dynasty that ruled Iran, Iraq and parts of Afghanistan, eastern Turkey and southern Russian. Eventually, in 1295, the Mongols in Western Asia converted to Islam, the region's prevailing religion. (Another grandson ruled China, and there was significant exchange of trade and ideas between the two dynasties.)

The period of Mongol khans came to an end in 1353 and the region subsequently fell to the control of local dynasties. Traditionally, the lasting image of Genghis Khan's conquests has been of Mongol ``hordes'' laying waste to civilization. At the time of the conquest, Baghdad - and Islamic society in general - was more advanced and committed to arts and learning than European culture. This show offers a guarded reappraisal of the Mongols.

``We may come to think of them as at least having better taste,'' Komaroff said. ``This show is not about saying they were great artists. You can't take away the fact they also caused enormous destruction. But there's an upside to all of this - the artistic creation. Following this period of conquest and destruction, there was a period of brilliant creativity in this end of Asia. That's what this exhibition is about.

``But to the ordinary person not interested in the intellectual ideas behind the exhibition, I think what will capture their interest is the beauty that's apparent everywhere,'' she continues. And the exhibition is, indeed, a winning display of tastefulness and beauty in itself.

One room re-creates the feel of being inside a large Mongol tent - looking at the opulent textile panels from the inside out, so to speak.

Another area features nothing but the gilt and lustered tiles - shades of blue and white, rich with detailing - that once lined rooms of the sole excavated palace from this period.

But the exhibit's most important objects are the illustrated pages from two manuscripts: an Arabic version of the Iranian ``Shahnama,'' or ``Book of Kings''; and the somewhat fanciful world-history survey, ``Jam' al-tavarikh'' (``Compendium of Chronicles''). The first existed as a Persian text before the Mongol presence and was considered the national epic of Iran for its story of heroic kings. But it was the Mongols' idea to create an illustrated version, using rich pigments of actual silver and gold for the 180 paintings it contained. As part of the world according to the Mongols, it showed the past Iranian rulers as Mongols. No complete copy of this version still exists, but this exhibition recovers 21 of the surviving 57 pages.

``It's a nonsubtle visual idea to establish the Mongols as legitimate rulers,'' Komaroff said. ``After this, all rulers of Iran commissioned illustrated versions of the book in which they were depicted.''

Overall, this exhibit doesn't have the kind of recognizable, familiar artwork - Ansel Adams' photographs, John Singer Sargent's paintings - that makes a museum show easily accessible to all.

But it has something else that makes it timely and important - a humanist underpinning.

``The beauty should say something about the people who produced the art,'' Komaroff said. ``Especially in a time like this, it's nice to feel that sense of commonality. If you can feel that commonality with people in the past from Iran and Iraq, you can also feel that in the present.''

THE LEGACY OF GENGHIS KHAN: COURTLY ART AND CULTURE IN WESTERN ASIA, 1256-1353

Where: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles.

When: Noon to 8 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, noon to 9 p.m. Fridays, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; through July 27.

Tickets: Adults $7; students 18 and older with ID and seniors 62 and older $5; children/younger students $1; children 5 and under free. Call [phone] or go to www.lacma.org.

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(1 -- 2 -- color) Items from the ``Legacy of Genghis Khan'' exhibit at LACMA include a star-shaped tile from Iran depicting a phoenix, above, circa 1270, and a Quran stand, below, from Iran or central Asia made in 1360.