This July marks a significant milestone for London’s cultural landscape, as the V&A South Kensington celebrates the 20th anniversary of The Jameel Gallery. Established in July 2006 to serve as the museum’s dedicated home for the arts of the Islamic Middle East, the gallery has spent the past two decades bridging historical heritage and contemporary discourse. To mark this double-decade achievement, the institution has curated a vibrant year-long programme featuring new displays, live craft demonstrations, public conversations, and international collaborations, while looking ahead to future initiatives that continue to spotlight the enduring vitality of Islamic artistic traditions.
Today, the gallery houses an extraordinary collection of approximately 400 objects spanning over a millennium of history, from the 8th century to the present day, originating from regions as diverse as Spain and Central Asia. Visitors wandering through the space encounter a rich dialogue between diverse mediums, where ceramics, intricate carpets, finely wrought metalwork, woodwork, delicate glass, and illuminated manuscripts sit side by side. Crucially, true to the museum’s founding ethos, the gallery remains entirely free for the public to visit, ensuring that these world-class collections are accessible to all.
The creation of the gallery was made possible through the generous support of the Jameel family, marking the beginning of an enduring, fruitful relationship with the Victoria and Albert Museum. This partnership expanded significantly in 2009 with the establishment of the Jameel Prize, a prestigious international award that explores the dynamic relationship between contemporary artistic practice and Islamic traditions. Throughout this anniversary year, supported by Community Jameel, the museum has rolled out a comprehensive series of public programmes, academic conferences, and special events designed to honor the gallery’s legacy and examine the evolving landscape of Islamic art curation.
A Year of Celebration
At the heart of the anniversary year has been a concerted focus on making and living craft, bringing traditional techniques directly into the gallery spaces to interact with the historic objects that inspired them.
During London Craft Week in May, the museum welcomed renowned Egyptian textile artist Hany Abd El-Kader. He delivered a live demonstration of khayamiyya—the intricate art of cotton appliqué—part of a sold-out talk introduced by Seif El Rashidi of the Barakat Trust. Alongside the public demonstration, a select group of participants had the rare opportunity to engage in a hands-on workshop led by Hany, creating their own pieces of khayamiyya to take home.
On July 17, exactly twenty years to the day since the gallery first opened its doors, the V&A hosted "The Islamic art Museumscape." This landmark conference brought together international scholars, curators, and museum professionals to take the pulse of how institutions around the world work with Islamic collections today, evaluating how themes, trends, and museological approaches have shifted over the past two decades. Later that same month, the celebrations continued with a vibrant Friday Late event titled "Shubbak: Body as a Vessel," which celebrated the breadth and vibrancy of contemporary Arab and SWANA (South West Asian and North African) creativity.
The autumn season brought further international collaboration during the London Design Festival in September. The gallery unveiled a striking new site-specific installation by Aziza Kadyri that weaves seamlessly through the architectural arches of the space. Her long-standing collaborator, master embroidery artist Yulduz Mukhiddinova, traveled from Uzbekistan to lead specialized suzani embroidery sessions both within the gallery and at the museum’s "Awakenings Friday Late" event. Accompanied by a performance from Uzbek singer-songwriter Laylo, approximately 80 participants had the unique opportunity to learn traditional stitchwork firsthand.
Twenty Years On
Reflecting on the milestone, Mariam Rosser-Owen, Curator of the Middle East in the V&A’s Asia Department, highlighted the historical depth and institutional journey of the collections.
"As curators of Middle Eastern art, we are so fortunate to be able to work with one of the best collections of Islamic art in the world," Rosser-Owen noted. "The collecting history is so interesting as well. Collecting of Middle Eastern art began in the 1850s, when the Museum was founded, to improve British design. Over the next century the V&A’s holdings of Islamic art grew to encompass outstanding and world-famous objects. At the same time, these holdings played a real part in inspiring some of Britain’s greatest artists and designers, including William Morris."
Rosser-Owen also pointed to the rich archival holdings preserved by the museum, which document the provenance of these treasures in meticulous detail. The physical space occupied by the gallery today originally opened in 1950 as a dedicated venue to showcase the finest pieces of the collection for the first time. Although the galleries received refreshes through the decades, by the time the museum formed a dedicated curatorial section for Middle East specialists in 2002, the spaces were in dire need of a comprehensive overhaul. The generous patronage of the Jameel family in 2006 provided the crucial catalyst, enabling the V&A’s world-class collections to be presented in an appropriately stunning and modern setting.
Echoing these sentiments, Fady Jameel, Family Ambassador of Community Jameel and Chairman and Founder of Art Jameel, emphasized the broader cultural mission behind the partnership.
"The Jameel Gallery at the V&A anchors the Jameel family’s long-standing commitment to supporting and celebrating Islamic art," Jameel stated. "Over the past 20 years, the gallery has become a platform for research, public engagement, and contemporary creative practice, showing how historic artistic traditions continue to evolve. Through my family’s partnership with the V&A, and Community Jameel’s wider work supporting traditional arts and craftsmanship, we remain committed to fostering partnerships that preserve these traditions, while ensuring they continue to reach new audiences."
Five Objects Not to Miss
For visitors returning to the gallery or discovering it for the first time, curators recommend exploring several standout pieces that define the breadth and mastery of the collection.
Foremost among them is The Ardabil Carpet. Created in 1539–1540 for the shrine of Shaykh Safi al-Din in Ardabil, north-west Iran, it stands as the world’s oldest dated carpet. When the gallery was designed in 2006, a vast central display case was custom-built to allow viewers to experience the carpet as it was originally intended: laid flat on the floor. To safeguard its remarkably preserved dyes from fading, the carpet is illuminated for ten minutes on every hour and half-hour.
Another undeniable highlight is the rock crystal ewer, carved in Cairo between 1000 and 1050 for the royal treasuries of the Fatimid rulers. The object demands close inspection to appreciate the intricate relief work, which depicts birds of prey swooping upon horned animals amidst swirling palmette scrolls, all sculpted from a single block of natural rock crystal.
The towering minbar made for Sultan Qa’itbay represents a marvel of medieval woodworking. Fabricated in Cairo between 1468 and 1496, this monumental pulpit is composed of complex geometric patterns assembled from hundreds of precisely carved pieces of wood and ivory.
Near the entrance, visitors are greeted by a lustrous lustreware bowl with a ship, manufactured in Málaga, Spain, between 1425 and 1550. The piece features a ship sailing across its centre, its metallic glaze shifting and shimmering dynamically as viewers move around it.
Finally, a dedicated case at the rear of the gallery highlights pioneering printmakers in Iran, featuring a recent acquisition gifted in 2023 by Tarlan Rafiee and Yashar Samimi Mofakham. The display showcases four leading figures of Iran’s pre-revolutionary modern art movement who worked actively between the 1950s and 1970s, including an untitled 1975 screenprint by Nasser Ovissi, a celebrated pioneer of the modernist Saqqakhaneh movement.
Still to Come
The anniversary celebrations will continue into late autumn. In November 2026, coinciding with Islamic Art Week, artist Mariam Ashraf will conduct a live-streamed public demonstration of traditional plaster carving. This intricate technique was historically employed to create ornamental windows embedded with colored glass, echoing the 19th-century Cairene architectural fragments preserved within the gallery.
Two decades after opening its doors, The Jameel Gallery continues to serve as a dynamic engine for discovering connections between the ancient and the modern, uniting extraordinary historical artifacts with living craftsmanship and contemporary creative voices.
The Jameel Gallery, located in Room 42 of the Islamic Middle East wing at V&A South Kensington, offers free admission daily, and no advance booking is required for visitors wishing to explore the space.