Exeter College alumna featured in major Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition

Exeter College alumna Saba Qizilbash (2021, MFA) will feature in Musical Bodies, a major new exhibition which opened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on 7 June 2026. 

Curated by Dr Bradley Strauchen-Scherer, Curator in the Department of Musical Instruments at The Met and a former DPhil student at Somerville College, Oxford, the exhibition explores the relationship between musical instruments and the human body across cultures and centuries. Bringing together more than 130 objects spanning 4,000 years of art and music history, Musical Bodies examines how sound, gesture, materiality, and performance shape human expression. 

The exhibition includes works from The Met’s collections alongside loans from institutions and private collections around the world, featuring objects ranging from ancient Egyptian rattles to paintings by Titian and Degas, as well as contemporary instrument-inspired fashion and one of Prince’s most celebrated guitars. 

Saba Qizilbash’s inclusion in the exhibition marks a significant international platform for the Exeter alumna’s work and places her alongside artists, makers, and musicians represented in one of the world’s leading museums. 

In a statement accompanying the exhibition, The Met described Musical Bodies as “the first major exhibition to explore the relationship between musical instruments and the body,” inviting visitors “to illuminate how we express who we are, what we value, and what we believe.” 

Musical Bodies runs from 7 June to 27 September 2026 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Further information about the exhibition is available through The Met and the accompanying catalogue published by Yale University Press.

Saba Qizilbash (2021, MFA) in the studio producing her work Repatriation of Tipu’s Tiger