Qatar Museums announces new MIA director

(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Qatar Museums has announced the appointment of Dr Julia Gonnella as director of the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) in Qatar.

She joins the museum from her previous post as curator at the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin.
Julia Gonnella studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, where she gained her BA in Islamic Art and Archaeology (1986) and MA in Social Anthropology (1987), before being awarded her PhD in Islamic Studies and Social Anthropology at Eberhard-Karls-Universität, Tubingen in 1994.
She began her career as a student intern at the V & A Museum in London before joining the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin in 1994 as assistant to the chief curator. She was appointed curator of the museum in 2009, where she has worked until her present appointment as director of MIA in Doha.
Among the exhibitions she curated for the Museum of Islamic Art at the Pergamonmuseum in Berlin are Heroic Times A Thousand Years of the Persian Book of Kings (2011), Samarra Centre of the World, 2012 (2013), Masterworks from the Serail, The Albums of Heinrich Friedrich von Diez (2013), and How Islamic Art Came to Berlin: The Collector and Museum Director Friedrich Sarre (2015).
She has undertaken extensive archaeological fieldwork throughout her career, and written and edited numerous books and articles.
Dr Julia Gonnella is also a recipient of significant awards and fellowships.
'I am honoured to be given this opportunity to lead Qatar's Museum of Islamic Art, one of the world's great museums. With its peerless collection, and its signature building, the museum has pioneered understanding and appreciation of Islamic art globally.
"I look forward to leading this unique institution into its second decade, building on its extraordinary achievements and opening up new stories of the treasures of Islamic art, Dr Gonnella said.

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