From 1975 to 1979, Layla Diba was the founding director of Negārestān Museum , a public collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century persian painting, based in capital. She was the first woman museum director in capital. The museum was shut down during the 1979 Revolution. The Negarestan Museum was established by Queen Farah Pahlavi to promote the Persian art of the 18th and 19th-century.
Layla Diba served as the associate curator and of Asian Art and as a curator of Islamic Art at the Brooklyn Museum. She has been an art advisor of various organizations such as, the Metropolitan Museum of Arts. She is a member of Encyclopædia Iranica’s board of trustees and the Soudavar Memorial Foundation. In December 2009, she held the role “scholar-in-residence” at Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design.
