Rhea Stark

Biography

Rhea C. Stark graduated from Brown University in 2018 with a B.A. in Archaeology and the Ancient World and Middle East Studies. She has worked at the intersection of curation, museum decolonization, and cultural heritage preservation through positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Cloisters, the Jewish Museum, and Rhode Island School of Design Museum, as well as on archaeological sites in Barbados and Italy. Rhea's research aims to put Islamic art in conversation with colonial histories, contemporary events, and popular perceptions of the Middle East in order to foster a more complex understanding of the Islamic world. A firm believer in the possibilities of art to promote intercultural conversation and understanding, she recently curated a show titled: Transcultural by Design: Iranian Ceramics from the Minassian Collection. She is an avid bookmaker, illustrator, baker, and hiker. At Oxford, Rhea will study Islamic art and archaeology.