Karin Adrian von Roques, Dr. phil., is a freelance curator and art critic, specialized on the modern and contemporary art from Islamic countries. She studied painting, stage and costume design at the Academy of Fine Art in Berlin and history of Islamic art at the Institute for Oriental art at the University of Bonn, Germany. She worked internationally as an advisor for art collectors, museums and galleries in Oriental art and Contemporary paintings, directed, curated and worked for international projects such as for the exhibition project “From Bagdad to Isfahan – Islamic manuscripts and miniatures of the Near East” in Lugano, Paris and New York, or for the “Hermitage World Project” of the Hermitage Museum in St.Petersburg. She was director of the Hermann Hesse Museum in Lugano, Switzerland from 1997-2000. In the last ten years she did research on modern and contemporary art from Islamic countries. She was co-curator of the exhibition “A Written Cosmos – Arabic Calligraphie Throughout the Centuries” at the Museum of Applied Art in Frankfurt, Germany in 2004. In 2005 she organized an exhibition with German artists for the Doha Cultural Festival in Doha in Qatar and curated the exhibition “Languages of the desert – Contemporary Arab Art from the Gulfstates (GCC)” on contemporary Arabic art at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Kunstmuseum) in Bonn, Germany, currently shown in the museum of the Institut du Monde Arabe and thereafter travelling to Italy. For 2007 she is preparing the exhibition “Contemporary Arab Art from the Mediterranean Arab countries” for the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Kunstmuseum). The participating countries will be i.e. Palestine, Jordania, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Tunesia and Morocco. Another exhibition project on contemporary Arab art from the gulf states which will be shown in Barcelona, in Spain in 2007. She is member of the Society of Islamic Art and Culture in Munich and founding member of the Annemarie Schimmel Forum in Bonn. She contributed to catalogues and writes regularly for newspapers and art magazines Her books include: Teppiche. Das Standardwerk für Liebhaber und Sammler (the oriental carpet) (München 1999)