Oleg Grabar

Oleg Grabar (born November 3, 1929 in Strasbourg , † January 8, 2011 in Princeton , New Jersey ) was an art historian and archaeologist who was a leading authority on Islamic art and architecture. He taught at Harvard University and conducted research at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

He was the son of the art historian André Grabar . He initially studied in Paris and then went to the United States in 1948, graduating from Harvard and Paris in 1950. In 1955 he received his doctorate from Princeton University . As a post-graduate student , he was an instructor at the University of Michigan . In 1953 and 1960/61 he was at the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem . From 1955 he was Assistant Professor, 1959 Associate Professor and from 1964 Professor in Michigan.

Then Grabar was professor at Harvard University from 1969 until his retirement, and from 1980 as Aga Khan professor for Islamic art and architecture. 1977 to 1982 he was chairman of the Faculty of Fine Arts. From 1990 until his retirement in 1998 he was professor at the Institute for Advanced Study.

From 1964 to 1972 he excavated Qasr al-Heir al-Sharqi in Syria , a desert castle northeast of Palmyra (he wrote the book City in the Desert about it ). Later he also excavated in Israel and Jordan. He dealt with Islamic art and architecture in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. In 1983 he was one of the founders of Muquarnas' Islamic Art History magazine .

Grabar was a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres , the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1973), the American Philosophical Society (1990), honorary member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences , Fellow of the British Academy (1988) and member of the Medieval Academy of America . In 1996 he received the Giorgio Levi Della Vida Medal, in 2001 the Charles Lang Freer Medal and in 2005 the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award from the College Art Association.

He was married to an English scholar Terry Grabar and had a son and a daughter.

Fonts

• The Formation of Islamic Art , Yale University Press 1973, 1987
• The Shape of the Holy: Early Islamic Jerusalem , Princeton University Press 1996
• Masterpieces of Islamic Art: The Decorated Page from the 8th to the 17th Century , Prestel 2009
• with Renata Holod, James Knustad, William Trousdale: City in the Desert. Quasr al-Hayr East , Harvard University Press, 2 volumes, 1978
• with Sheila Blair: Epic Images and Contemporary History: The Illustrations of the Great Mongol Shahnama , University of Chicago Press 1980
• The Mediation of Ornament , Princeton University Press 1992
• The Shape of the Holy: Early Islamic Jerusalem
• with Glen Bowersock , Peter Brown (editors): Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Post-Classical World , Harvard University Press, 1999
• with Richard Ettinghausen, Marilyn Jenkins-Madina: Islamic Art and Architecture 650-1250 , Yale University Press 2001 (first with Ettinghausen, Penguin Books 1987)
• Early Islamic Art 650-1100 , Ashgate / Variorum 2005
• Mostly Miniatures: an introduction to persian painting , Princeton University Press 2000
• Islamic visual culture, 1100-1800 , Ashgate 2006
• The Dome of the Rock , Harvard University Press, 2006 (on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem)
• Penser l'art islamique: une esthétique de l'ornement , Paris, A. Michel 1996
• Constructing the Study of Islamic Art , 4 volumes, 2005, 2006 (collection of articles)
• Islamic Art and Beyond , Ashgate 2006
• The Alhambra , Harvard University Press 1980
• The Great Mosque of Isfahan , New York University Press 1990
• Studies in Medieval Islamic Art , London, Variorum Reprints 1976

literature

• Oleg Grabar. In: Muqarnas. Vol. 10 (Essays in Honor of Oleg Grabar) 1993, pp. Ii, vii-xiii

Web links

• Literature by and about Oleg Grabar in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website at the IAS
• William Grimesjan: Oleg Grabar, Historian Who Studied Islamic Culture, Dies at 81. In: New York Times , January 12, 2011.