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: