Ladan Akbarnia on Clubhouse

Bio

Ladan Akbarnia is Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art at The San Diego Museum of Art and a specialist on the art of medieval Iran and Central Asia. Her research and interests include cross-cultural transmissions and oral traditions in the visual culture of the Islamic World, East Asia, and South Asia; Persianate drawings; contemporary Middle Eastern and South Asian art; and issues of display in global museums. She's currently organizing two major exhibitions for 2023 & 2024, on contemporary South Asian art and the intersection of art, science, and Islamic discourse, respectively, the latter supported by the Getty Foundation's Pacific Standard Time initiative.

Before coming to San Diego, Ladan was Curator (Assistant Keeper) of Islamic Collections and Arts of the Book at the British Museum from 2010–19, where she was also a lead curator for the Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World and co-author for its accompanying publications. Previously, she was Hagop Kevorkian Associate Curator of Islamic Art at the Brooklyn Museum, where she organised a reinstallation of the Islamic collection and the exhibition Light of the Sufis: The Mystical Arts of Islam with its accompanying catalogue (2009); and acquired the collection’s first works of Iranian contemporary art. She also served as Executive Director of the Iran Heritage Foundation, the London-based non-profit charity dedicated to the preservation of Iran’s culture and languages, and as Consulting Curator for the Aga Khan Museum Collection.

Ladan received her AM and PhD in the History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University; an MA in Art History & Critical Theory from UCLA; and her BA in Art & French from Vassar College.