The Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art is the leading international conference on Islamic art and architecture. The symposium is co-sponsored by VCUarts, VCUarts Qatar and Qatar Foundation and has been held every two years since 2004.
Since its establishment in 2004, the HBK Symposium has:
- Attracted over 2,200 attendees from every continent;
- Hosted over 70 speakers, including the leading scholars, curators and practitioners of Islamic art;
- Enabled over 60 scholars of Islamic art and culture to come to the Symposium as an HBK Fellow, all travel expenses paid;
- Generated the publication of six books, published by Yale University Press, which gather the talks presented at each Symposium since 2007;
- Been downloaded in the form of free podcasts from our website over 10,000 times since 2010.
Past Symposia include:
- Expanded Frontiers, Richmond, Virginia (2004)
- Rivers of Paradise: Water in Islamic Art and Culture, Doha, Qatar (2007)
- And Diverse Are Their Hues: Color in Islamic Art and Culture, Cordoba, Spain (2009)
- God Is Beautiful and Loves Beauty: The Object in Islamic Art and Culture, Doha, Qatar (2011)
- God Is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth: Light in Islamic Art and Culture, Palermo, Italy (2013)
- By the Pen and What They Write: Writing in Islamic Art and Culture, Doha, Qatar (2015)
- Islamic Art: Past, Present, and Future, Richmond, Virginia (2017)