Dr Ladan Akbarnia Appointed as Head of Curatorial at The Fitzwilliam Museum

The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, announced Dr Ladan Akbarnia as its new Head of Curatorial and Professor of Islamic World Collections joining the Museum in September 2025.

Ladan comes to the Fitzwilliam with 20 years of specialised curatorial and research experience in the arts of the Islamic world, from Iran, Central Asia and India. She has worked with major institutions across the world, in her most recent role at The San Diego Museum of Art (SDMA) as its Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art and previously as Curator and Assistant Keeper for the Islamic Collections at The British Museum, where she was one of the lead curators for the Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World. At SDMA, she organized the major touring exhibition, Wonders of Creation: Art, Science, and Innovation in the Islamic World (September 2024–June 2025), which has been supported by substantial grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Getty Foundation.

Ladan previously served as Executive Director at the Iran Heritage Foundation in London and Associate Curator of Islamic Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, where she was responsible for the 2009 reinstallation of the Islamic gallery and the exhibition Light of the Sufis: The Mystical Arts of Islam.

Additionally, Ladan was a consultant for the Aga Khan Trust for Culture Museum Support Unit in Switzerland and taught Islamic art history at Smith College and Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She has published extensively on a variety of topics, including cross-cultural transmissions between Iran and East Asia, Sufism and Islamic art, contemporary Middle Eastern art and methodologies of museum display.

As well as leading our curatorial team, Ladan will be the Museum’s first specialist in the art and material culture of the Islamic World, a real asset of the Fitzwilliam’s collection that has been little researched. Ladan will curate and lead research on this collection, with strengths in ceramics and books from Central and South Asia, alongside material from North Africa and Turkey.

Ladan received a Master of Arts in art history from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she also studied critical theory and French literature, and a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in the history of Islamic art and architecture from Harvard University.

Dr Ladan Akbarnia, Head of Curatorial and Professor of Islamic World Collections, said:

“I am delighted to join the team at the Fitzwilliam Museum, an institution whose strong history of research and collaboration I have long admired. I especially look forward to working closely with the team to support and enhance the development of the Museum’s collection, grow its innovative research and display programmes and help leverage the exciting possibilities offered by partnerships with the University and city of Cambridge and beyond .”

Dr. Neal Spencer, Director of Research, Deputy Director, Collections, said:

“I’m really excited to be welcoming Ladan to the team, bringing her extensive experience of curating different forms of collections from across the diverse geographies and periods of the Islamic world. Ladan’s experience and collaborative working style — demonstrated across different institutions in the US and UK — and her track record managing teams, and delivering major display and exhibitions, are a perfect fit for the Fitzwilliam Museum, as we look to redisplay our collections and leverage our University context to innovate in object-based research that is relevant to our communities and audiences.”

The Fitzwilliam Museum is the principal museum of the University of Cambridge and the largest cultural venue in the region, welcoming around 500,000 visitors a year. Founded in 1816, the Museum houses over half a million works of art and material culture spanning from 10,000 BCE to the present day, principally from Europe, North Africa and Asia. This includes sculpture, ceramics and decorative arts, paintings, drawings, prints, illuminated manuscripts, money, literary and musical autographs and the archives of artists and others. The Museum contributes to the University’s mission in delivering research and teaching grounded in and inspired by the collection, using curatorial, conservation, science and practice-based methodologies.