This is probably not of much interest to anybody, but I saw an exhibit on Afghanistan at the Met last year that was truly excellent. Afghanistan was on the old Silk Road and while parts of it were tribal and primitive, it was a very cosmopolitan crossroads (prior to Islam), where Jews, Christians and Buddhists crossed paths.
The exhibit was sponsored by the Karzai government and obviously a lot of great curators, archeologists and others had been involved in it and, looking at the video, you could see that Afghanis were very proud of the exhibit.
I wonder if one of the reasons Obama wants to retire from Afghanistan may be related to the fact that Afghanistan, like Persia and many other places now under Islamic domination, actually had a wonderful and fascinating past that revived after the US (briefly) liberated it. But now Obama wants to return it to Islam.