Paradise on show: Inside the exotic retreat of tobacco heiress Doris Duke as her treasures arrive in New York for first public display

Shangri La calls to mind a secluded paradise, an exotic place that evokes the mysteries of the ancient Orient.
For the late philanthropist and art collector Doris Duke, her five-acre retreat in Honolulu was that place.
She used the name of the mythical oasis for her earthly slice of Eden on the edge of the Pacific Ocean and filled it with the art and architecture of the Islamic world that enthralled her all her life.
A selection of the artifacts she assembled is being shown for the first time outside the estate at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

Life and times: The tobacco heiress Doris Duke, one of the wealthiest girls in the world in 1946 (left) and in 1975 (right)

Elegant: Doris Duke with Mr C Alan Hudson at an International Polo match on Long Island, New York in 1931

'Doris Duke's Shangri La: Architecture, Landscape and Islamic Art' opened Friday to celebrate the year of her 100th birthday and runs through January 6. It also will travel to North Carolina, where her father was born and where her family made its fortune.

 

The exhibit is intended to give a wider audience a look at the interplay among Shangri La's modernist 1930s architecture, its oceanside Hawaiian locale and the tobacco heiress' Islamic art collection, said Deborah Pope, director of the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, which acquired the title to Shangri La after Duke's death.

Paradise: Doris Duke's Idyllic Shangri-La in Hawaii

Tranquill: Duke's stunning Shangri La borders the ocean

Duke created the foundation in her will to promote the study and understanding of Islamic culture; Shangri La serves as a center for Islamic arts and cultures and is open for public tours.
'The ability to be absolutely modern and to seamlessly incorporate Islamic tradition is what makes Shangri La so alive an environment and so relevant today,' she said.
Many of the objects in the show are seen in the photos as they appear in the elaborately appointed Islamic-inspired rooms and courtyards, giving a wonderful sense of what it must have been like to live among such opulence.

Ornate: The Syrian room at Doris Duke's Shangri La, in Honolulu

Peaceful: Doris Duke's living room in Shangri La, where she would spend the winter months