Experience Damascus Room at the L.A. County Museum of Art

In 18th-century Syria, members of the wealthy El-Mourabeh family feted honored guests with banquets of lamb samosas, kunafa pastry, and dried fruit in the reception hall of their estate. This Ottoman splendor is rendered in modern context as Damascus Room, debuting for the first time in the U.S. as a permanent installation at Los Angeles County Museum of Art in December. Acquired in 2012, the 15-by-20-foot chamber was imported to L.A. by way of London in 24 crates and reassembled this past summer. Its poplar panels, carved with Arabic poetry and embossed with ajami gypsum reliefs, veneered in brass leaf and painted with gesso pigments, offer historical mise-en-scène for the museum’s simultaneous exhibition, “Dining With the Sultan: The Fine Art of Feasting,” which will present Islamic art in the context of its associated culinary traditions through some 250 antique stone-inlaid silver vessels, embroidered Turkish napkins, and tinned copper salt shakers. There will also be an interactive holographic dining experience, further transporting visitors to the cradle of civilization.