Venetia Porter was born and brought up in Beirut and studied Arabic and Islamic Art at the University of Oxford. She completed her doctorate from the University of Durham on the history and architecture of Medieval Yemen. She is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art and has worked at the British Museum between 1989 and 2022. She was the lead curator for the Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World (2018) and her exhibitions include Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East (2006, Dubai 2008); Hajj: journey to the heart of Islam (2012) and Reflections: contemporary art of the Middle East and North Africa (2021).