This July marked a significant milestone for the arts and cultural landscape of London as The Jameel Gallery at V&A South Kensington celebrated its twentieth anniversary. Over the past two decades, the gallery has served as a cornerstone for the appreciation, study, and display of the arts of the Islamic Middle East, bridging centuries of heritage with contemporary creative dialogues. To mark this enduring legacy, the institution has spent the year curating a vibrant calendar of new displays, live craft demonstrations, public conversations, and academic symposia, while casting an eye forward to the evolving future of museum curation.
Established in July 2006 through the philanthropic support of the Jameel family, the gallery was envisioned as a dedicated home for the Victoria and Albert Museum’s exceptional holdings from the Islamic world. Today, the space brings together approximately 400 objects originating from regions spanning from Spain to Central Asia, created across a timeline stretching from the 8th century to the modern day. Ceramics, intricate carpets, finely wrought metalwork, delicate woodwork, historic glass, and illuminated manuscripts sit side by side in a thoughtfully designed environment. True to the ethos of the museum, the gallery remains entirely free for the public to visit, welcoming millions of domestic and international visitors over the last twenty years to engage with the rich material culture of the Islamic Middle East.
The opening of the gallery in 2006 laid the groundwork for a lasting and fruitful relationship between the V&A and the Jameel family. 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. This year, with the ongoing support of Community Jameel, the museum has used the twentieth anniversary as an opportunity to reflect on how perceptions and presentations of Islamic art have transformed over the last two decades.
Making and living craft traditions have been placed firmly at the heart of the anniversary year, bringing active practitioners directly into the gallery space to engage with the historical inspirations surrounding them. In May, coinciding with London Craft Week, the museum welcomed Egyptian textile artist Hany Abd El-Kader. He delivered a live demonstration of khayamiyya, the intricate traditional art of Egyptian cotton appliqué. The demonstration was part of a sold-out talk introduced by Seif El Rashidi of the Barakat Trust. A select group of visitors also participated in a hands-on workshop led by Abd El-Kader, gaining firsthand experience in the precise stitching techniques required to create their own pieces of khayamiyya to take home.
The anniversary momentum continued into July, hitting the exact calendar date of the gallery’s founding. On 17 July, the museum hosted "The Islamic art Museumscape," an academic and professional conference designed to take the pulse of how cultural institutions worldwide engage with Islamic collections today. The symposium explored shifting methodologies, evolving themes, and institutional developments over the twenty years since the gallery first opened its doors. Later that same month, the museum hosted a special Friday Late event in collaboration with Shubbak, titled "Body as a Vessel," which celebrated the vibrant landscape of contemporary Arab and Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) creativity.
By September, the anniversary celebrations dovetailed with the London Design Festival, introducing a fresh spatial intervention to the historic architecture of the gallery. A new installation by artist Aziza Kadyri was woven dynamically through the gallery’s arches, creating a visual dialogue between past and present design languages. Kadyri’s 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. Approximately 80 participants had the unique opportunity to learn traditional stitches under her guidance, accompanied by a live performance from Uzbek singer-songwriter Laylo.
Reflecting on the milestone, Mariam Rosser-Owen, Curator of the Middle East in the museum’s Asia Department, noted the profound depth of the institution’s holdings and their long history of engagement with Middle Eastern artistry. Collecting in this area began as early as the 1850s, concurrent with the founding of the museum itself, initially driven by a desire to improve British design standards. Over the subsequent century, the V&A’s collection grew to encompass world-famous masterpieces, which in turn inspired generations of British artists and designers, most notably William Morris.
Rosser-Owen pointed out that the museum’s archival holdings and provenance records are exceptionally rich. The physical space occupied by the gallery today originally opened in 1950 as a dedicated environment to showcase the finest highlights of the collection for the first time. Although the galleries received subsequent refreshes in the 1970s, the formation of a dedicated Middle East curatorial section in 2002 made a comprehensive overhaul necessary. Thanks to the generosity of the Jameel family, the 2006 renovation allowed these world-class collections to be presented in an aesthetically compelling and historically resonant setting.
Fady Jameel, Family Ambassador of Community Jameel and Chairman and Founder of Art Jameel, emphasized the cultural significance of the milestone. He noted that the gallery anchors the family’s long-standing dedication to supporting and celebrating Islamic art. Over the past twenty years, the space has functioned as an active platform for scholarly research, public engagement, and contemporary creative practice, continuously demonstrating how historic artistic traditions remain living, evolving entities. Through the ongoing partnership with the V&A and Community Jameel’s broader international work in support of traditional arts and craftsmanship, the organization remains committed to fostering collaborations that preserve these invaluable traditions while ensuring they resonate with new generations of audiences.
Visitors exploring the gallery today encounter a curated journey through masterworks of material culture, led by several standout pieces that anchor the exhibition space. Among them is the legendary Ardabil Carpet, created in 1539 and 1540 for the shrine of Shaykh Safi al-Din in Ardabil, north-west Iran, widely recognized as the world’s oldest dated carpet. When the gallery opened in 2006, a specialized environmental case was constructed at its center to display the carpet horizontally, as originally intended. To protect its delicate natural dyes from degradation, the carpet is illuminated for ten minutes on every hour and half-hour.
Another highlight is the rare rock crystal ewer, carved in Cairo between 1000 and 1050 for the treasuries of the Fatimid rulers. The vessel features sophisticated relief carvings of birds of prey swooping on horned animals amidst swirling palmette scrolls, all executed from a single block of solid rock crystal. Nearby stands the towering minbar made for Sultan Qa’itbay in Cairo between 1468 and 1496, an architectural masterpiece whose intricate geometric surfaces are assembled from hundreds of precisely fitted pieces of carved wood and ivory.
At the entrance of the gallery, visitors are greeted by a lustrous earthenware bowl made in Málaga, Spain, between 1425 and 1550, featuring the depiction of a sailing ship at its center that shimmers with metallic glaze as viewers move around it. Further into the gallery, a newly curated display features 20th-century Iranian prints stemming from a 2023 gift by Tarlan Rafiee and Yashar Samimi Mofakham. Highlighting leading figures of Iran’s pre-revolutionary modern art movement from the 1950s through the 1970s, the display includes an untitled 1975 screenprint by Nasser Ovissi, a pioneer of the influential Saqqakhaneh movement.
The anniversary programming will extend into the autumn months. In November 2026, during Islamic Art Week, artist Mariam Ashraf will conduct live-streamed demonstrations of traditional plaster carving—the historical technique utilized to create decorative window frames embedded with colored glass, such as the 19th-century Cairene examples housed within the collection.
Twenty years after its landmark opening, The Jameel Gallery continues to illuminate the deep connections linking historical craftsmanship with contemporary artistic expression. By bringing together extraordinary material heritage, live artisanal practice, and diverse creative voices, the gallery remains a dynamic space for discovery at V&A South Kensington, welcoming all visitors to explore Room 42 free of charge without the need for advance booking.