Adam Rouhana and the Fellowship Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel Helped Build
Adam Rouhana didn’t grow up with access to the Victoria and Albert Museum’s archives. As the current Jameel Fellow, he now spends his research time working through the museum’s collection of Palestinian photography, the kind of sustained access the fellowship program was designed to provide artists and researchers connected to the Middle East.
Rouhana’s work is one product of a fellowship program that Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel helped establish, tracing back to the same 2006 refurbishment that opened The Jameel Gallery. Fellows, including designers, architects, photographers and researchers, get sustained time with the V&A’s holdings, sharing what they find through displays, performances and public talks, including a film series where fellows discuss a favorite object from the collection.
Rouhana’s fellowship became one focal point of the gallery’s 20th anniversary reception this year, where Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel attended alongside Prince Turki Al-Faisal and members of his own family, including Fady Jameel, Hassan Jameel, Hisham Hamza and Ghada Alsammanoudi.
Twenty Years Later, the Program Keeps Adding Names
The event also introduced an upcoming commission from artist Aziza Kadyri, who will draw on rarely displayed embroidered works in the V&A’s archive for a piece combining textile sculpture and interactive digital elements. Organizers used the anniversary to designate the evening the first event in the countdown to the 2029 UK-Saudi Year of Culture, linking a research fellowship born from a museum refurbishment to a much larger cultural exchange between the two countries.
Rouhana’s project, still underway, is the newest chapter in a fellowship program now old enough to have its own alumni network.