The Jameel Prize: How Mohammed Jameel’s Gallery Became an Award

Among the initiatives that grew out of a 2006 partnership with the Victoria and Albert Museum, none has traveled further than the Jameel Prize. Established in 2009 as an award for contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic culture, the prize has since exhibited work from 63 artists across seven editions and toured to 22 venues around the world.

The prize traces its roots directly to the gallery that Mohammed Jameel helped fund, which opened after a refurbishment of the V&A’s Islamic Middle East collection. What began as a single gallery of more than 400 historic objects, including the Ardabil Carpet and the Minbar of Sultan Qaytbay, became a launchpad for a prize recognizing living artists rather than historic ones.

That expansion mattered again this year, when the V&A marked the gallery’s 20th anniversary with programming aimed at contemporary practice rather than nostalgia. The museum hosted live demonstrations by Cairo tentmakers, opened an exhibition of early 20th-century Saudi royal garments and prepared a new commission from artist Aziza Kadyri for the London Design Festival.

A Prize Built for the Present, Not the Past

Fady Jameel, chairman and founder of Art Jameel, has described the gallery’s trajectory as proof that historic artistic traditions keep finding new expression rather than sitting still in glass cases. The Jameel Prize is the clearest evidence of that argument: a museum gallery named for one family that has become a recurring, international recognition for artists working today.

Mohammed Jameel attended this year’s anniversary reception alongside Prince Turki Al-Faisal, Hassan Jameel, Hisham Hamza and Ghada Alsammanoudi, where organizers pointed to the prize’s growth as one measure of how far the original 2006 gift has traveled in 20 years.