Long entwined with the study of Asian and Islamic art and literature, the Dame Jillian Sackler Director of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art has supervised over 40 special exhibitions at the Freer|Sackler since 2002. Under Julian Raby’s leadership, exhibitions featuring some of the Asia’s most striking and valuable works of art and culture have gone on display at the museum and in traveling shows, including a collection of 56 paintings on loan from India that examined life in the royal court of Jodhpur in the 18th and 19th centuries, and a recently opened exhibition of Qur’anic art, the first ever to be exhibited in the United States.

In helping to guide the creation of Turquoise Mountain: Artists Transforming Afghanistan, Raby wanted to present a completely different view in order to disrupt conventional Western views of the country and its people. “The exhibition tells a story of how art can give meaning, purpose, and pleasure to people, even in times of great difficulty. That story is a universal one, that we all – wherever we are – can appreciate and relate to. Read more ...

Article

• Raby, Julian and Brock, Sebastian. 2016. "New Light on Syriac Painting in the Eleventh Century." Eastern Christian Art, 10 33–80. https://doi.org/10.2143/ECA.10.0.3223624. 2016
• Raby, Julian. 2015. "Chinese Whispers: Fable and Fact in Early European and Muslim Accounts of the Manufacture of Porcelain." Bulletin of the Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong, 15. 2015

Chapter

• Raby, Julian. 2016. "Contents & Contexts: Re-Viewing the Diez Albums." In The Diez Albums: Contexts and Contents. Gonnella, Julia, Weis, Friederike, and Raunch, Christoph, editors. 13–51. Leiden/Boston: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004323483_003. 2016
• Raby, Julian. 2014. "Mosul metalworkers after the Mongols." In Court and Craft: A Masterpiece from Northern Iraq. Ward, Rachel, editor. 56–67. London: The Courtauld Gallery in association with Paul Holberton Publishing. 2014
• Raby, Julian. 2012. "The Principle of Parsimony and the Problem of the 'Mosul School of Metalwork'." In Metalwork and Material Culture in the Islamic World: Art, Craft and Text. Porter, Venetia and Rosser-Owen, Mariam, editors. 11–85. London: I.B. Tauris. 2012
• Raby, Julian. 2007. "Cardiform world map." In Encompassing the globe: Portugal and the world in the 16th and 17th centuries--Reference Catalogue. Levenson, Jay A., editor. 61–62. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. 2007
• Raby, Julian. 2007. "Folio from the 'Gulshan Album' (Rose Garden Album) with calligraphy and European figures." In Encompassing the globe: Portugal and the world in the 16th and 17th centuries-- Reference Catalogue. Levenson, Jay A., editor. 112–113. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. 2007

Book

• Krahl, Regina, Guy, John, Wilson, J. Keith, and Raby, Julian, editors. 2010. Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds. Washington, D.C.: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. 2010