March 6 (Bloomberg) -- A parade of mannequins in brightly colored wedding dresses greets visitors entering the cultural souk that has taken over Washington’s Kennedy Center. They’re from the exhibition “Brides of the Arab World.”

Upstairs, Egyptian jeweler Azza Fahmy’s gold and silver creations are strewn among heaps of terra cotta pots. Elsewhere a movie soundtrack plays as a bed covered with large pillows bearing photographed faces beckons.

This is the visual-arts side of the sprawling “Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World,” the largest such cultural display ever mounted in the U.S., with 22 nations represented via more than 800 artists. Up since Feb. 23 and offering theater, dance, music, film, art and literature, it’s also the most expensive exhibition the Kennedy Center has ever put on, costing $10 million.

Among highlights still to come, there’s Shakespeare’s historical play staged in a tribal context in “Richard III: An Arab Tragedy,” which is performed tonight and tomorrow with a live musical score.

The festival wraps up on March 15 with the 1987 movie “Wedding in Galilee,” the first Palestinian film screened at the Cannes Film Festival, in which a traditional Arab wedding is clouded by the presence of the local Israeli commander.

‘On the Fringe’

The visual arts on offer include photography, jewelry, calligraphy, installations, paintings and fashion. Lila Baghdady, a lawyer born and raised in the U.S. by parents from Iraq, says she learned more about her culture in an afternoon of wandering through the show than she knew her entire life.

“Arab culture is on the fringe of American society, and as an American I bought into a lot of American prejudices about Arabs,” Baghdady says, gazing at the bright colors and gold embroidery of some wedding dresses.

Jordan’s Queen Rania was the driving force behind the exhibition “Breaking the Veils,” a traveling show of 73 mixed- media pieces by Arab women from the Jordanian government’s permanent collection.

The Kennedy Center has displayed 29 works from the show in a quiet room surrounded by a mashrabiya, a screen designed for Arab women to see the world outside their homes without being seen.

Katrina Griessman, co-chairman of the three-year tour, says “Breaking the Veils” was pulled together in 2002 in response to media coverage of Arab women after 9/11. Griessman wants a disinction to be drawn between radical Islamic culture and countries like Jordan and Egypt.

“Women don’t all live behind veils, these artworks aren’t all the same message,” she says. “This is about breaking down stereotypes.”

Women’s Rights

Laila Muraywid, a 53-year-old Syrian artist who graduated from the college of fine arts in Damascus, says her work reflects her support of women’s rights. “Untitled” (1992) is a framed mixed-media abstract that paints on a thumb-shaped piece of handmade paper a rusty-brown peak and the rest in bright turquoise. The shape and color division suggests a woman veiled in burka from the shoulders up.

“My work is about the inside and the outside, what women want to be and what they have to deal with,” she says.

Palestinian Laila Shawa, 68, is by far the most controversial artist here. Born in Gaza and educated in Cairo and Rome, she says her goal is to “create an awareness of the injustices that are being exercised by occupation.” Shawa says the politicization of Islam, not the faith itself, leads to the oppression of women.

Dollar Signs

In “The Sponsors,” a work in photo lithography on paper, Shawa shows the American flag with two horizontal lines of dollar signs overlayed on it. She says the graphic is from a photo of a wall on a main street in Gaza where Palestinians write messages to each other.

“You could almost follow up events in Gaza day by day by looking at these walls,” she says. Israeli soldiers erased the graffiti by covering one wall in thick, black dollar signs, Shawa says, “confirming the role of Americans in oppression.”

Egyptian photographer Youssef Nabil’s “Cinema” documents his life as though it were a movie. An upbeat soundtrack from 1950s Egyptian movies plays in the background in a darkly lit room with a huge bed at center. On the bed are large pillows featuring photographic portraits mainly of people in the artist’s life.

Festival curator Alicia Adams says she decided to exhibit the work this way to show the kind of “cinema” experience -- sitting on pillows while watching a movie -- that people typically have in Egypt.

United by Dance

Emmy-winning choreographer Debbie Allen traveled to Oman to create the dance piece OMAN...O Man!, which was commissioned by the Kennedy Center. Allen says she knew nothing about Oman or its people. Their lives are so different, she says: “I mean, they pray five times a day. What American does that?”

Allen says the show uses modern, ballet, jazz, African and hip hop.

“If there’s anything that can unite us, dance arts is the one,” Allen says. “You can say what you want about religion, politics, human rights, but when it gets to the bottom, there are some things that break through all of those barriers, and dance is one of them.”

“Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World” runs through March 15. Some shows are sold out. Information: +1-202-467-4600; http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/festivals/08- 09/arabesque/.

(Kate Andersen is a reporter for Bloomberg News. Any opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Kate Andersen in Washington at kandersen7@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: March 6, 2009 00:01 EST