The Lure of the East: A Curator’s Fascinating Journey

The remarkable journey of one of the first women to become a curator of Islamic art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and an internationally recognized scholar in the field.

As a girl growing up in Frenchtown, New Jersey, Marilyn Jenkins-Madina recalls first learning about the Egyptian pyramids in sixth grade. That discovery opened her mind to the possibility of not only learning more about worlds far removed from her small-town existence, but of actually experiencing them and living them.

Throughout her life, opportunities to follow uncharted roads have presented themselves in ways that she has not dismissed. It has been the driving force in her career and her life.

She became a curator of Islamic art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and an internationally recognized scholar in the field. She took more than 50 international trips, most of which were to the Middle East, at times and in locations where women were not exactly respected or welcomed in a capacity of authority. She came to enjoy an enduring friendship with Kuwaiti royalty. And, last but certainly not least, she became the wife and partner-in-adventure of a wonderful gentleman from Damascus who was a professor at Columbia University and also a Kurdish agha.

From the banks of the Delaware to the shores of the Arabian Gulf and beyond, The Lure of the East: A Curator’s Fascinating Journey is the story of her remarkable journey.

Dr. Jenkins-Madina began her long curatorial career at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 1964. Having received her B.A. from Brown University in 1962, she continued to pursue her education while working at The Metropolitan Museum, earning both her M.A. and Ph.D. during this time. From her initial appointment as Curatorial Assistant, she rose through the ranks during her forty-year tenure as curator in the Department of Islamic Art and was named Curator Emerita upon her retirement in 2004.

This memoir is meant to inspire others to dare to take their own road less traveled.

Dr. Marilyn Jenkins-Madina is Curator Emerita of the Department of Islamic Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. During the forty years she served as a curator in that department, she not only played a key role in helping to create the museum’s first major (ten-gallery) installation of Islamic art but she organized numerous special exhibitions as well and sought out important gap-filling objects for the department to add to its large and comprehensive collection. She has also lectured widely and written or co-authored seven books and published more than thirty articles. During her long career, Dr. Jenkins-Madina was invited to advise and consult on installations of Islamic art in a number of Muslim countries, including serving as Project Director for the creation of Kuwait’s Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah (Museum of Islamic Art), which opened to great acclaim in 1983. She lives in New York City.