Ladan Akbarnia

Ladan Akbarnia is Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art at The San Diego Museum of Art (SDMA), where she oversees the permanent collection of holdings from South and Southeast Asia, Iran and Central Asia, and the Islamic world. Specializing in medieval Iran and Central Asia, her expertise and publications address cross-cultural transmissions; Sufism; Persianate drawings; contemporary Middle Eastern art; and methodologies of museum display. Before joining SDMA, she was Curator of Islamic...See more

Ladan Akbarnia is Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art at The San Diego Museum of Art (SDMA), where she oversees the permanent collection of holdings from South and Southeast Asia, Iran and Central Asia, and the Islamic world. Specializing in medieval Iran and Central Asia, her expertise and publications address cross-cultural transmissions; Sufism; Persianate drawings; contemporary Middle Eastern art; and methodologies of museum display. Before joining SDMA, she was Curator of Islamic Collections at The British Museum from 2010-19, where she was a lead curator for the Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World and co-author of its accompanying publications. From 2007-10, she served as Hagop Kevorkian Associate Curator of Islamic Art at the Brooklyn Museum, where she organized a reinstallation of the Islamic collection and the exhibition, Light of the Sufis: The Mystical Arts of Islam, with its accompanying catalogue (2009). She also served as Executive Director of the Iran Heritage Foundation (2009-10) and as Consulting Curator for the Aga Khan Trust for Culture Museum Support Unit (2008-09). She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in the History of Islamic Art and Architecture. See less