BIOGRAPHY
TIM STANLEY
Tim Stanley is senior curator for the Middle East in the Asian Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. Tim joined the V&A in July 2002 from the private Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, also in London, where he had worked since 1991.
Tim's interest in the Middle East began 30 years ago, when he visited the region while still in school. He subsequently studied the languages and literatures of the Middle East and the history of the Ottoman empire at the universities of Manchester, Istanbul, Oxford and Sofia. Work on illuminated Ottoman documents introduced him to the field of Islamic art, and he has since worked on many aspects of the subject as a curator, writer, lecturer, and editor.
Tim is currently responsible for the redisplay of the V&A's outstanding collections of Islamic art from the Middle East. The main Islamic gallery at the V&A, currently closed, will re-open in the summer of 2006 as the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art.
Tim has had more than 20 years experience of preparing exhibitions of Islamic art. His first involvement was with Tulips, Arabesques and Turbans: Decorative Arts of the Ottoman Empire, shown at Leighton House, London, in 1981. He later worked on exhibitions in Britain, the Middle East and the United States, and most recently, in 2002, he was joint curator of Ornement de Perse: Islamic Patterns in 19th-century Europe, also at Leighton House.
Tim's specialist publications have covered calligraphy and other arts of the Islamic book, especially those related to the Qur'an; the history of Iranian lacquer; tools and instruments from the Islamic world; and aspects of Ottoman history and culture. Tim is also the principal author of Palace and Mosque, the first book to cover all aspects of the V&A's Islamic collection. It will be published in July 2004, to coincide with the opening of the V&A's traveling exhibition in Washington.
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