Ashmolean Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

Mr Yousef Jameel, Hon. LHD, is a Fellow of the Ashmolean Museum. In 2005, he made a substantial benefaction to the Ashmolean to establish the Online Centre for Islamic and Asian Art, as well as the Centre for the Study of Eastern Art.

After decades of leading a group of major enterprises to international success, a few years ago, Mr Jameel decided to shift his attention to sponsoring education, scientific research and the arts in a comprehensive scheme.

After original funding of the establishment of a Business School at the American University in Cairo, where he graduated in Economics, provided by the Abdullatif Jameel Group, Yousef Jameel has continued to support the school through generous funding.

In order to support scientific research he has funded the establishment of the Science and Technology Research Center at AUC. The centre is interdisciplinary and draws on the expertise of the university’s engineering and science departments. The centre supports a variety of nanoscience and technology-oriented projects, which make use of state-of the-art facilities.

Starting in 2004, he built a comprehensive scholarship program, which over the years has supported and is supporting close to 300 MBAs, as well as Masters and PhDs in sciences. Over one hundred of MBA students are being supported at the American University in Cairo, in order to cultivate and develop a new cadre of entrepreneurial leaders in Egypt and the Middle East. Other programmes are at the American University of Beirut, Bremen, Humboldt and Marburg Universities in Germany, Cambridge, Cardiff and Oxford Universities in the UK, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Sabanci University in Istanbul, and a scholarship program for Senegalese students in Senegal and France.

In Cambridge, through his support, the Cambridge Muslim College opened in Autumn 2009.

In Kabul, Yousef Jameel supported the Turquoise Mountain Foundation with three generous donations. The foundation, the Presidents of which are The Prince of Wales and President Hamid Karzai, manages among others the reconstruction of a part of the old city, using traditional mud brick technique. Included in this project is the successful establishment of a school for calligraphy, ceramics, wood carving and stone masonry, which is operational at this time and attracts a growing public interest with its exhibitions and other events.

According to Mr Jameel, “Knowledge should be accessible to everyone, everywhere, at any time. The Online Centre for Islamic and Asian Art will be a major step towards achieving this goal. I envisage the Centre as the hub of a future worldwide network exploring how different cultures learnt from each other and enriched peoples’ lives as a result.”