The Maqasid Charitable Schools Display Their Fine Arts at UNESCO

The fine arts hold no mean place in the programs of the Maqasid charitable schools. The association gives them particular care and spends the utmost effort for their progress and flowering. I observed this at close hand in a short visit to the exhibition which the Maqasid schools held at UNESCO — foremost among them the girls' college headed by Miss Zahiyah Dughan — and who has a better right than the girl to the fostering of the fine arts: sewing, embroidery, drawing, and painting?

No sooner had I entered the hall — the needlework hall — than I found myself surrounded by a splendid artistic atmosphere. Here were garments tailored in the modern style, and here wraps, kerchiefs, and cushions embroidered and figured. And over there, in one of the corners, an "enchanted corner," as the saying goes, in which were displayed kinds of sweets, preserves, and refreshments, and some silver and copper pieces from which the tarnish had been cleared away by artistic methods — the work of the students of the girls' college. Then one of the teachers led me to the upper floor, where there stood out on the walls paintings and pictures in oils and water-colors, by the brush of the students, boys and girls alike. In some corners of the room, too, were ranged all manner of toys and educational models made by the children of the kindergarten, which likewise belongs to "the Maqasid."

All these exhibits testified to the abounding care and attention given to the encouragement of the fine arts; and these arts, for all their modesty, were the starting point toward a taste for beauty in the rising generation. God keep the women and men who labor to strengthen the artistic spirit in our institutes.