The gallery comprises five main sections focusing primarily on Arms & Armour, Arts In Life, Documents and Writing, Technology, and Ancient Spirituality & Religion. The gallery also shares a temporary exhibition space with the adjacent Christopher Ondaatje South Asian Gallery to showcase objects from the ROM's Middle Eastern and South Asian collections.
Krzysztof Ciuk, Assistant Curator, Material Culture of Islam, in the ROM's World Cultures department, says, “In creating the new Wirth Gallery of the Middle East, the curatorial team has attempted to illustrate the wide and varied aspects of the history of the lands which, both in the past and presently, remain under cultural and religious influence of the Fertile Crescent, Mesopotamia, and Levant.
Our approach is essentially a thematic one, highlighting a number of fundamental themes, from economic to artistic to spiritual, to examine the diverse peoples and cultures of the Middle East.”
The Ancient Spirituality & Religion section explores the beginnings of humankind's expression of faith through ancient practices.
A collection of rotund clay female figurines dated to the 4th millennium BC, stone plaques of winged spirits and demons from the 1st millennium BC and bronze worshipper statuettes belonging to ancient Sumerians, illustrate the spiritual iconography of early polytheistic cultures.
The display of Jewish ossuaries and Christian and Islamic religious objects demonstrate the arrival of the three great monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
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