Born in Jerusalem, Vera Tamari is a visual artist, Islamic art historian, art educator and curator. She received her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from Beirut College for Women in 1966. She specialized in ceramics at the Istituto Statale d’Arte per la Ceramica in Florence, Italy in 1974 and obtained an M. Phil. Degree in Islamic Art and Architecture from the University of Oxford in 1984. She served for more than two decades as professor of Islamic Art and Architecture and Art History at Birzeit University, where she also founded and directed the Virtual Gallery and the Birzeit University Museum between 2005 and 2010. There she conceived and curated the Cities Exhibition series, (2009-2016). Tamari is actively involved in the promotion of art and culture in Palestine and was a member of the New Visions Collective. She serves as advisor and member to numerous institutions and cultural boards and served as jury member for YAYA (Young Artists Award organized by the Abdel Muhsin Qattan Foundation) and AFAC (Arab Foundation for Art and Culture).

As an artist, she specializes in ceramic sculpture and conceptual art and has exhibited widely since 1974 in Palestine, the Arab World, Europe, the UK, Japan and the USA. In 2021, The AM Qattan Foundation published a book entitled Intimate Reflections, the Art of Vera Tamari and, in 2023, Tamari published the book RETURNING: Palestinian Family Memories, in Clay Relief, Photographs and Text.