This July marked a significant milestone for London’s cultural landscape as The Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art at the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum celebrated its twentieth anniversary. Since opening its doors in July 2006, the gallery has served as the museum’s dedicated home for the arts of the Islamic Middle East, housing a breathtaking collection that spans over a millennium of human creativity. To mark two decades of public engagement, scholarship, and artistic exchange, the institution has curated a vibrant year-long programme featuring new displays, live craft demonstrations, academic conferences, and dynamic public events that connect historic masterpieces with contemporary artistic practices.
Today, the gallery brings together approximately 400 exceptional objects originating from regions stretching from Spain to Central Asia, dating from the 8th century right up to the present day. Visitors exploring the space encounter a rich dialogue of materials and techniques, where delicate ceramics, intricate carpets, masterful metalwork, ornate woodwork, fine glassware, and illuminated manuscripts sit side by side. True to the V&A’s founding mission and ongoing public commitment, the gallery remains entirely free for everyone to visit, ensuring that these world-class collections continue to inspire broad and diverse audiences.
The creation of the gallery two decades ago was made possible through the generous support of the Jameel family, marking the beginning of a profound and lasting institutional relationship with the V&A. This partnership deepened significantly in 2009 with the establishment of the Jameel Prize, an influential international award that explores and celebrates the evolving relationship between contemporary artistic practice and rich Islamic traditions. Throughout this anniversary year, supported by Community Jameel, the museum has used the milestone to reflect on the gallery’s legacy while looking forward to new chapters in cross-cultural artistic dialogue.
A Year of Living Traditions and Public Celebration
Making and craft have remained at the heart of the twentieth-anniversary celebrations, successfully bridging the gap between historical museum artifacts and the living traditions that inspired them. Rather than treating the collection as static history, the anniversary programming has actively invited contemporary makers into the gallery space to demonstrate traditional techniques for modern audiences.
In May, during the height of London Cultural and Craft Week, the gallery welcomed renowned Egyptian textile artist Hany Abd El-Kader. He delivered a captivating and sold-out demonstration of khayamiyya, the intricate traditional art of Egyptian cotton appliqué. The event was introduced by Seif El Rashidi of the Barakat Trust. Beyond observing the master at work, a select group of participants had the rare opportunity to engage in a hands-on workshop led by Abd El-Kader, allowing them to try their hand at the intricate craft and create their own piece of khayamiyya to take home.
The summer months brought further academic and cultural reflection. On July 17, exactly twenty years to the day since the gallery first opened, the V&A hosted a major international conference titled The Islamic Art Museumscape. The gathering brought together museum professionals, curators, and scholars from around the world to take the pulse of how institutions manage, interpret, and exhibit Islamic art collections today, examining how curatorial themes, methodologies, and global perspectives have evolved over the past two decades. Later that same month, the museum hosted a vibrant Friday Late event titled Body as a Vessel, produced in collaboration with Shubbak, which celebrated the diverse and dynamic creativity of contemporary Arab and Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) artists.
The celebrations continued into September to coincide with the London Design Festival, introducing a striking new installation by artist Aziza Kadyri that weaves delicately through the gallery’s historic arches. Kadyri’s collaborator, master embroidery artist Yulduz Mukhiddinova, travelled from Uzbekistan to lead immersive suzani embroidery sessions both within the gallery spaces and during the museum’s Awakenings Friday Late event. Accompanied by a live performance from Uzbek singer-songwriter Laylo, approximately 80 participants learned the intricate traditional stitches, directly engaging with Central Asian textile heritage.
Twenty Years On: A Curatorial Perspective
Reflecting on the milestone, Mariam Rosser-Owen, Curator for the Middle East in the V&A’s Asia Department, highlighted the profound historical depth and continuous evolution of the institution’s Islamic 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 records preserved by the museum, which meticulously document the provenance and acquisition history of the collections. The physical space occupied by the gallery today has a long history of dedicated exhibition design, having first opened in 1950 to showcase the museum’s premier Islamic holdings in a permanent, dedicated location for the first time. Although the space underwent a refresh in the 1970s, the formation of a specialized curatorial section for the Middle East in 2002 made a comprehensive overhaul necessary. The transformative renovation in 2006, made possible by the Jameel family, successfully elevated the presentation of these world-class collections into an environment tailored to their cultural and aesthetic significance.
Echoing these sentiments, Fady Jameel, Family Ambassador of Community Jameel and Chairman and Founder of Art Jameel, emphasized the broader cultural impact of the gallery’s longevity.
"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."
Masterpieces of the Collection
For visitors discovering the refreshed displays or returning to explore old favorites, the gallery offers an extraordinary journey through diverse geographies and dynasties. Among the standout items that define the collection is the world-renowned Ardabil Carpet. Crafted in 1539 and 1540 for the shrine of Shaykh Safi al-Din in northwestern Iran, it stands as the oldest dated carpet in existence. When the gallery was established in 2006, a specialized environmental case was engineered at its exact center so that the monumental carpet could be viewed horizontally, as originally intended. To ensure the preservation of its delicate natural dyes, the carpet is illuminated for ten minutes on every hour and half-hour.
Another remarkable treasure is a carved rock-crystal ewer produced in Cairo between 1000 and 1050, originally created for the imperial treasuries of the Fatimid rulers. The object showcases exceptional craftsmanship, featuring subtle reliefs of birds of prey swooping on horned animals amidst swirling palmette scrolls, all carved out of a single piece of solid rock crystal. Similarly towering in both scale and craftsmanship is the minbar made for Sultan Qa’itbay in Cairo between 1468 and 1496. This monumental pulpit is constructed from hundreds of meticulously assembled geometric pieces of carved wood and ivory.
Near the entrance of the gallery, visitors are greeted by a shimmering lustreware bowl produced in Málaga, Spain, between 1425 and 1550. Featuring a depiction of a sailing ship at its center, the bowl’s metallic glaze catches and reflects light as viewers move around it. Additionally, a new display case at the rear of the gallery highlights twentieth-century Iranian printmaking, featuring works gifted to the museum in 2023 by Tarlan Rafiee and Yashar Samimi Mofakham. These prints represent prominent pre-revolutionary modern artists active between the 1950s and 1970s, including an untitled 1975 screenprint by Nasser Ovissi, a key figure in Iran’s modernist Saqqakhaneh movement.
Looking Ahead
As the anniversary year draws toward its close, the programming continues. In November, during the museum’s annual Islamic Art Week, artist Mariam Ashraf will perform a live-streamed demonstration of traditional plaster carving. This intricate technique was historically used to create decorative architectural windows featuring colored glass, echoing the nineteenth-century examples from Cairo that form part of the gallery’s permanent displays.
Two decades after its landmark opening, The Jameel Gallery continues to serve as a vital cultural bridge, uncovering connections between the historical past and the creative present while uniting extraordinary artifacts, living craft traditions, and fresh artistic voices under one roof at V&A South Kensington. Room 42 remains open to the public daily with free admission, welcoming visitors to explore its treasures without the need for advance booking.