Dr. Amin Jaffer
Born
Kigali, Rwanda
Dr. Amin Jaffer is Director of The Al Thani Collection, an encyclopaedic holding of over 5,000 works of art spanning millennia, representing the vision of His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al Thani.
Formerly Senior Curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum and International Director of Asian Art at Christie’s, Jaffer has authored and edited several notable publications, including Furniture from British India and Ceylon (2001) and Made for Maharajas: A Design Diary of Princely India (2006). He co-curated Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe, 1500–1800 (2004) and Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts (2009) both at the V&A Museum as well as exhibitions of The Al Thani Collection at the Palazzo Ducale, Venice; Forbidden City, Beijing; Grand Palais, Paris; State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg; Fine Arts Museum, San Francisco; and Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo. He was commissioning editor of Beyond Extravagance: A Royal Collection of Gems and Jewels (2013, 2019), Hôtel Lambert (2020).
Jaffer led the development of The Al Thani Collection’s museum space at the Hôtel de la Marine in Paris, which opened to critical acclaim in 2021. Since its inception, the space has hosted exhibitions in collaboration with institutions such as the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, the Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca’ d’Oro, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2023, he was appointed as the Artistic Director of the Islamic Arts Biennale, held in Jeddah from January to May 2025. He serves as Curator of the National Pavilion of India at the 61st Venice Biennale, 2026 and plays a curatorial role in the upcoming Yuge Yugeen Bharat Museum, New Delhi.
Note on curating the
National Pavilion of
India 2026
“Today, India is undergoing a moment of accelerated transformation. Cities expand vertically and horizontally, absorbing villages, erasing and redrawing neighbourhoods. Towns renew themselves at an unprecedented pace, driven by new infrastructure, technology, and economic growth. The physical change in environment is accompanied by a growth in mobility. Within India, internal migration has become a defining reality. People move fluidly between states, languages, and cultural zones in response to opportunities for education, employment and marriage. Some leave the country altogether, forming part of a diaspora that is now increasingly recognised for its contribution across sectors.
Constituting nearly twenty per cent of the world’s population, Indians today inhabit multiple homes simultaneously — physical, spiritual, remembered, and imagined. Geographies of Distance: Remembering Home situates itself within this condition, asking how the idea of home persists when the physical place disappears.
The five artists gathered here — Alwar Balasubramaniam, Ranjani Shettar, Sumakshi Singh, Skarma Sonam Tashi, and Asim Waqif — each evoke home through material and making. Working with soil and thread, bamboo, natural fibre and papier-mâché, their practices are rooted in India’s material traditions, yet their questions are urgently contemporary: as time passes, what of our home remains? What disappears? What do we actively sustain?”
Learn more about the curator’s perspective and the artist’s reflections
Major exhibitions curated
and co-curated
Exhibitions
- Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe, 1500–1800, V&A Museum, London, 2004
- Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts, V&A Museum, London, 2009.
- Des Grand Moghols aux Maharajas: Joyaux de la collection Al Thani, Grand Palais, Paris, 28 March - 5 June 2017.
- Tesori dei Moghul e dei Maharaja: Le Collezione Al Thani, Doge’s Palace, Venice, 9 September 2017 - 3 January 2018.
- Treasures from The Al Thani Collection: Gems and Jewels from India and Masterpieces from a Royal Collection , Palace Museum, Beijing 17 April - 17 June 2018.
- East Meets West: Jewels of the Maharajas from The Al Thani Collection, Legion of Honour, San Francisco, 3 November 2018 - 24 February 2019.
- Man, God and Nature in the Ancient World: Masterpieces from The Al Thani Collection, Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo, 6 November 2019 - 9 February 2020.
- Treasures of the Al Thani Collection at the Hôtel de la Marine 18 November 2021 - 25 April 2022.
- Dynastic Jewels, Power, Prestige & Passion, 1700-1950, The Al Thani Collection at the Hôtel de la Marine, Paris, 9 December 2025 – 5 April 2026.
Islamic Arts Biennale, Jeddah (January - May 2025)
- Artistic Director role, shaping the presentation of Islamic art across historical and contemporary works.
Books
- Jaffer, A, Furniture from British India and Ceylon: a catalogue of the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum, (London: Victoria and Albert Museum), 2001.
- Jaffer, A, Luxury Goods from India: the art of the Indian cabinet-maker, (London: Victoria and Albert Museum), 2002.
- Anna Jackson and Amin Jaffer eds., Encounters: the meeting of Asia and Europe, 1500-1800, (London: Victoria and Albert Museum), 2004.
- Jaffer, A, Made for Maharajas: A design diary of princely India, (London: New Holland Publishers, York), 2006. (reprinted in French (2007), Italian (2007) & German (2008)).
- Anna Jackson and Amin Jaffer eds., Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts (London: Victoria and Albert Museum), 2009. (reprinted in German 2010).
- Jaffer, A. ed., Beyond Extravagance: A Royal Collection of Gems and Jewels (London: Assouline), 2013.
- Jaffer, Amin and Amina Okada ed., From the Great Mughals to the Maharajas: Jewels from the Al Thani Collection (Paris: RMN), 2017.
- Jaffer, A., ed. Treasures from The Al Thani Collection, compromising Gems and Jewels from India (vol. I) and Masterpieces from a Royal Collection (vols. II & III) (Beijing: Forbidden City Publishing House), 2018.
- Jaffer, A., Chapman, M., ed. Meets West: Jewels of the Maharajas from The Al Thani Collection, exh. cat. Legion of Honour, San Francisco (San Francisco: Delmonico Books and Prestel, 2018).
- Jaffer, A. ed., Beyond Extravagance: A Royal Collection of Gems and Jewels (2nd Edition), Vol II, (London: Assouline, 2019).
- Jaffer, A, S. Casteluccio and T. Tane, Treasures of the Al Thani Collection at the Hôtel de la Marine (Paris: Editions du Patrimoine, 2021).