The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), Community Jameel, and Art Jameel marked on Sunday the 20th anniversary of The Jameel Gallery at the V&A, celebrating two decades since its opening, creating a space which has transformed the presentation, interpretation, and public understanding of Islamic art.Community Jameel marked The Jameel Gallery’s anniversary with a special reception hosted at the V&A, attended by Prince Turki Al-Faisal, Prince Abdullah bin Khalid bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United Kingdom and Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel KBE, Founder of Community Jameel, as well as Fady Jameel, Hassan Jameel, Hisham Hamza, and Ghada Alsammanoudi.**media[2742271]**At the event, George Richards, Director of Community Jameel, announced that The Jameel Gallery anniversary celebration had been designated the inaugural event in the official lead-up to the 2029 UK-Saudi Year of Culture.Opened in July 2006 following a major refurbishment supported by the Jameel family, The Jameel Gallery has revived the V&A’s internationally renowned collection of Islamic art from the Middle East. The Gallery introduced a new approach to display and interpretation, combining contemporary exhibition design, bespoke cases, lighting, and multimedia resources to help visitors engage more deeply with one of the world’s most significant collections of Islamic art.The Jameel Gallery’s collection at the V&A includes more than 400 objects spanning ceramics, textiles, carpets, metalwork, woodwork, glass, and manuscripts, including the Ardabil Carpet, the Minbar of Sultan Qaytbay, and a Fatimid rock crystal ewer. Through the Gallery, these works are presented not only as historic objects, but as part of a wider story of artistic exchange, craftsmanship, and creativity across the Islamic world.During the Gallery’s refurbishment, the Jameel family supported an international touring exhibition of highlights of the V&A’s collection, to bring them to a wider global audience. Between 2004 and 2006, the exhibition, Palace and Mosque: Islamic Art from the Victoria and Albert Museum, travelled to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas; Setagaya Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan; and the Millennium Galleries in Sheffield, England.Over the past 20 years, the partnership between the Jameel family and the V&A has grown beyond the permanent Gallery to support contemporary commissions, acquisitions, fellowships, research, public programmes, and digital initiatives aiming to connect historic collections with contemporary artistic practice and new audiences.A central part of this collaboration is the Jameel Prize, established in 2009 by the V&A as an international award for contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic culture, history, society, and ideas, organised in partnership with Art Jameel. Across seven editions, the Jameel Prize has exhibited the work of 63 artists and designers from all over the world, and toured to 22 venues globally. The Prize demonstrates the continuing influence of Islamic cultural traditions on contemporary creative practice.Additionally, the Jameel Fellowship Programme provides artists, designers, architects, photographers, and researchers with opportunities to undertake sustained research with the V&A’s collections. Residencies are offered to both local and international artists from the Middle East and the diaspora, and give them the opportunity to go behind-the-scenes of the museum, look closely at objects and archives, and develop new lines of enquiry in their practice. Fellows have shared their work through displays, performances, and symposia, as well as the Hidden Gems film series, which invites them to discuss a favourite object in The Jameel Gallery. Current Fellow, Adam Rouhana, is working on the V&A’s large collection of photography from Palestine.The Jameel Gallery has also become a platform for temporary displays and contemporary interventions showcasing the rich traditions of Islamic art. Recent highlights include Tatreez: Palestinian Embroidery, which brings together historic Palestinian dress from the V&A collection with contemporary works by Aya Haidar and Zeid Hijazi, exploring embroidery as both a living artistic tradition and an expression of cultural identity.To mark The Jameel Gallery’s 20th anniversary, the V&A has curated an extensive programme of activities, including temporary displays, a conference, and public events. Earlier this year, the Museum hosted Khayamiyya: Egyptian Tentmaking, bringing master tentmakers from Cairo’s historic Street of the Tentmakers to the V&A for demonstrations and workshops. In June 2026, the V&A opened Golden Threads: Dress from Saudi Arabia, a temporary display in The Jameel Gallery displaying a rare group of early twentieth-century royal garments recently acquired by the V&A and exploring the craftsmanship, regional identity, and cultural significance of Saudi dress.On 17 July 2026, the V&A hosted The Islamic Art Museumscape: The Jameel Gallery 20th Anniversary Conference, bringing together museum professionals, curators, and art historians from leading institutions around the world to discuss how the presentation and interpretation of Islamic art in museums has evolved over the past two decades.Later this year, as part of the London Design Festival, Uzbek artist Aziza Kadyri will unveil a major new site-specific commission for The Jameel Gallery, drawing on rarely displayed embroidered works from the V&A collection through textile sculptures, hand-embroidered tapestries and interactive digital elements.Prince Turki Al-Faisal said: “As ambassador to Her Majesty the great late Queen Elizabeth II, at which time His Royal Highness The then-Prince of Wales named me chairman of the board of trustees of The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts — a privilege and honour that I consider the highest of my ambassadorship. 20 years ago, my friend Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel invited me to attend the inauguration of The Jameel Gallery. Mr Jameel has formed his own endeavours, with many positive developments having occurred since. Now, under His Majesty King Charles’ stewardship, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom is flourishing, with His Majesty serving as the principal link between the two countries.”Fady Jameel, Family Ambassador of Community Jameel and Chairman and Founder of Art Jameel, who attended the reception, said: “The Jameel Gallery at the V&A anchors the Jameel family’s long-standing commitment to supporting and celebrating Islamic art. 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.”Sir Tristram Hunt, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, said: “We remain incredibly grateful to the Jameel family for their visionary support, without which the realisation of The Jameel Gallery at the V&A in 2006 would not have been possible. Now in its 20th year, the Gallery continues to serve as one of the Museum’s most-admired spaces, showcasing 400 objects from our Islamic Middle East collection, free to access for all. The Jameel Programme at the V&A is a deeply valued opportunity to explore and champion art and design from the Middle East and North Africa, and our expert curators are delighted to be delivering enhanced activity for this year, celebrating this important milestone in the history of the Gallery.”Community Jameel has an almost 20-year partnership with The King’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts includes the Jameel Houses of Traditional Arts, a network of schools for craftsmanship in Cairo, Jeddah and Scotland, on the Dumfries House estate, headquarters of The King’s Foundation.Community Jameel’s commitment to the traditional arts, with a focus on the Arab world, combines sustaining and continuing historic design and craft practices and providing practical training and job creation opportunities for traditional artists and craftspeople to achieve sustainable livelihoods, a major priority for Community Jameel amid a burgeoning Arab youth employment crisis.Through The Jameel Gallery and the wider Jameel Programme at the V&A, the partnership continues to support scholarship, cultural exchange, contemporary creativity, and public engagement with the artistic heritage of the Islamic world.
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