Sheila Randolph Canby

Sheila Canby, a Wilmington, Delaware, native and one of the world's foremost authorities on Islamic art, died Sunday, August 17, at Delaware Hospice in Milford, Delaware, of complications from cancer. She was 77.  Thus ended a remarkable, vibrant life and career as an administrator and scholar of Persian art and culture that began, according to family lore, with an art course at Vassar that offered only cursory inspection of Islam but nevertheless  ignited a lifelong passion that produced two graduate degrees at Harvard and  then curatorial and research positions at museums in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston,  London and New York. 

Of these the most prominent were the British Museum in London, where she served as curator of Islamic art and antiquities from 1981 until 2009, at which point she reached the summit of her peripatetic journey -- appointment as Patti Cadby Birch Curator in charge of the Metropolitan Museum's formidable collection of more than 12,000 works of art dating from the seventh to the 20th century and reflecting the cultural and geographical sweep of Islamic civilization from Spain to India and beyond. There she stayed until her retirement ten years later in 2019, organizing exhibitions, lecturing and helping to complete the museum's permanent gallery  in 2011. As  necessary companions to the job, she wrote and edited numerous reviews and books (her  coffee table offerings are majestic), raised money for the museum   (no small matter) and traveled frequently to various capitals of the Islamic world in an effort to  keep lines open and build bridges to Iran and other countries during a period of considerable diplomatic turbulence. 

Her intensity belied a warm and cheerful soul, who leaves behind a host of friends and admirers, not least her colleagues. Her successor at the Met,  Dr. Navina Haidar, put the matter thusly: "Sheila represented the finest traditions of art history, combining connoisseurship with keen scholarship and excellent writing." 

Sheila was born in Wilmington to Henry and Elizabeth Canby on January 10, 1949. She attended the Tatnall School and Ethel Walker’s in Simsbury, Ct., before matriculating at Vassar.  Sheila was accompanied for much of her journey by three companions. One, her husband, John Voss, an investment advisor and banker whom she met in Cairo in 1977. Two, her son Tobias,  born in 1985. And third: a tennis racquet. Armed with an explosive and intimidating forehand, she played whenever and wherever she could, winning tournaments at Queens Club in London and the Vicmead Hunt Club in Wilmington, and rising at early hours to play in mixed doubles games under New York bubbles. However stressful her job, she found a ready outlet for her emotions in the poor soul in her line of fire across the net.  

Sheila also leaves two sisters with whom she had a warm relationship:  Marjorie L’Allemand, of Paris, and Elizabeth Semple, of New York.     

A Memorial Meeting for Worship and burial was held on Sunday, August 24, 2025 at Centre Friends Meeting, Centerville, DE. 

A memorial service will be at Trinity Episcopal Church, 1108 N. Adams Street in Wilmington, Delaware on Saturday, October 25, 2025 at 11:00AM.  A reception will follow immediately after at the Delaware Art Museum, 2301 Kentmere Parkway, Wilmington.  LIVESTREAM MEMORIAL SERVICE click here

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