In the last few decades, American and European higher education institutions have spent much energy dismantling canons safeguarded in their curricula. Cornerstone texts that have heretofore established methodological bases for discussion are contested by students and professors alike in favor of fostering a more comprehensive cultural memory. Likewise, museums and other art establishments have seemingly embarked on a quest to tear down deeply entrenched cultural biases, mining their collections to present forgotten or disregarded narratives in order to better (and morally) represent a global majority. While deconstruction is a valid intellectual enterprise, it has left the art world at a loss in terms of a common ground on which to imagine alternative ways of seeing. In this cultural framework, the second edition of the Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah raised a compelling question: what is a canon good for?