Richard Wilding
Richard Wilding is a curator, consultant, photographer and film producer specialising in the promotion of cultural heritage through exhibitions, events programmes, publications and documentary films. He has been working in the Middle East since 2010, leading heritage documentation, preservation and public engagement projects in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, UAE, Syria and Egypt. Richard is currently Curator at Al Ain Museum in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Richard is a Trustee of the Mansoojat Foundation, an NGO formed by a group of Saudi women to preserve and promote the Kingdom’s traditional costumes. Since 2010, he has travelled extensively throughout Saudi Arabia, documenting its regional diversity of clothing, artisanal crafts, archaeology and natural history. He produced and edited the book ‘Traditional Costumes of Saudi Arabia’, published in 2021.
Between 2021 and 2023, Richard worked as a heritage consultant with the Ministry of Culture, Saudi Arabia, planning over 40 exhibitions and events relating to cultural and historical subjects in the Kingdom. He continued this role in 2024 when he worked with the MoC as a consultant on the exhibition ‘Common Ground’, exploring the shared history and cultural connections between Arabia and Mesopotamia.
In March 2024, Richard was commissioned by Shurooq (Sharjah Investment and Development Authority) to document the heritage, archaeology and natural history of the Mleiha National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Emirate of Sharjah. His photographs now feature in the book ‘Mleiha: Ancient Treasures of the UAE’, published by Assouline and unveiled in November 2024 at the Sharjah International Book Fair.
In 2025, Richard’s fifteen-year journey photographing Saudi Arabia’s historic sites, archaeology, traditional costumes and crafts was profiled in ‘Aperture’, a one-hour documentary film broadcast throughout the GCC region on MBC.
Richard has planned and curated exhibitions at the Islamic Arts Museum in Kuala Lumpur, the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, and at the Royal Geographical Society, British Museum and V&A in London. His photographs have been exhibited at numerous galleries and institutions worldwide, including Sharjah International Photography Festival, AlUla International Airport, Leighton House Museum, Courtauld Institute of Art, Royal Society for Asian Affairs, and Houses of Parliament, London.
Richard has given lectures at the universities of Cambridge, Exeter, Newcastle, Leicester, Birmingham, Reading and York in the UK, and at the universities of Al-Qadisiyah, Diyala and Babylon in Iraq. In 2021, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, London, in recognition of his work with the preservation and promotion of cultural heritage.