Oleg Grabar
| Oleg Grabar | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 3, 1929 Strasbourg, France |
| Died | January 8, 2011 (aged 81) Princeton, New Jersey |
| Occupation | art historian, archeologist |
| Spouse(s) | Terry |
| Children | Nicolas, Anna Louise |
| Relatives | André Grabar |
Oleg Grabar (November 3, 1929 – January 8, 2011) was a French-born art historian and archeologist, who spent most of his career in the United States, as a leading figure in the field of Islamic art and architecture.
Grabar attended the University of Paris, where he studied ancient, medieval, and modern history, before moving to the US in 1948. He completed degrees from both Harvard and the University of Paris in 1950. In 1955, he obtained a PhD from Princeton University.
He served on the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1954-69, before moving to Harvard University as a full professor. In 1980, Grabar became Harvard's first Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture. He was a founding editor of the journal Muqarnas in 1983. He became emeritus from Harvard in 1990, and then joined the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, becoming emeritus there in 1998.
According to the President of the Historians of Islamic Art Association, "Grabar transformed the fields of Islamic art, architecture and archaeology through his myriad scholarly works, general textbooks, and through training and inspiring many generations of undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Michigan and at Harvard."
Grabar's archeological and scholarly research covered a wide range of Islamic studies across Africa, the Middle East, and Muslim Asia.
Early in his career, Grabar spent two years (1953-1953 and 1960–1961) at the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem. From 1964 to 1972, he directed excavations on a Medieval Islamic town at Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi, Syria, work later described in a two-volume book he coauthored, City in the Desert, Qasr al-Hayr East. Other major books in English include The Shape of the Holy (Princeton, 1996), The Mediation of Ornament (Princeton, 1992), The Great Mosque of Isfahan (NYU, 1990), and The Formation of Islamic Art (Yale, 1973).
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