LONDON: The Saudi Museums Commission marked the graduation of a new cohort from its international training program at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London on Friday, part of its drive to staff the Kingdom’s museums with homegrown professionals trained to global standards.
The commission’s mandate is to develop and operate flagship museums that celebrate Saudi heritage and expand cultural participation nationwide.
“This is about Saudi human capability,” said Taghreed Al-Saraj, the commission’s general manager for education and talent development.
“We are developing museums in Saudi Arabia, and we need to operate them, and who better to do that than Saudis themselves? We recognize this is a new sector, but we are capable of tackling it. Now we need to train, reskill, and give people the knowledge they need to operate these museums.”
Al-Saraj said the international program had run in Egypt, Italy, and the UK, culminating at the V&A in London.
“All of the Saudi participants — more than 150 across the different cities — have gained expertise and international best practices in the museum field, which they are now bringing back to Saudi Arabia,” she said. “This program will feed into all of our museums, public and private, that will open by 2030.”
Participants received practitioner-led training at the V&A, with direct access to curators, conservators, and learning teams, using live projects and case studies rather than classroom theory — an approach designed to translate quickly into day-to-day practice in Saudi institutions.
“This is a very special day,” said Ian Ellard, head of adult learning and training at the V&A.
“It’s the last day of a very tough four weeks. They’ve worked incredibly hard and learned an incredible amount. These Saudi professionals are building a cultural center for their families and future generations, and this is certainly not the end of the relationship between the Museums Commission and the V&A.”
The graduation aligns with Vision 2030’s Human Capability Development Program, which aims to equip citizens with skills to compete and contribute across sectors, including culture and heritage. The commission’s strategy is to turn that national commitment into museum-ready talent, deploying it into new institutions opening across the country.
Ellard highlighted the strong momentum behind the partnership, saying: “We’ve seen an incredible level of engagement. The ambition the commission and the Kingdom have for the future of the culture sector is infectious — you can feel it in the room.”
Al-Saraj framed the outcome in practical terms: trained Saudis moving into roles that strengthen documentation and provenance, build conservation workflows, and deliver programs connecting collections with local audiences.
The V&A — a family of museums with a national collection of over 2.8 million objects spanning 5,000 years — provided the scale and operational insight that shaped the cohort’s final weeks before their return to Saudi Arabia.
As the ceremony ended, the message from both sides was clear: export the methods, localize the delivery, and build the museum workforce the Kingdom needs.
