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Grabar (Oleg) Papers
2012.M.7
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Title: Oleg Grabar papers
Date (inclusive): 1898-2009
Number: 2012.M.7
Creator/Collector:
Grabar, Oleg
Physical Description:
55.6 Linear Feet
(126 boxes, 6 flatfile folders)
Physical Description:
4.5 GB
(1,743 files)
Repository:
The Getty Research Institute
Special Collections
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles 90049-1688
reference@getty.edu
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref
(310) 440-7390
Abstract: The Oleg Grabar papers document the
career of the scholar who transformed the field of Islamic art history in the United States.
Compiled over more than fifty years, the archive contains thousands of photographs, slides,
notes, specialized and hard-to-find research materials, unpublished works including lectures
and student theses, historical maps, and ephemera. A small amount of material, especially
photographs of Byzantine art and architecture, originally collected by his father, André
Grabar, is also included.
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Language: Collection material is in English
and French with some German and other languages.
Oleg Grabar, the distinguished scholar and professor of Islamic art and architecture, was
almost destined to be an academic. By the time he was born on November 3, 1929, his father
André Grabar, who had left Russia after the revolution, was teaching art history at the
University of Strasbourg in France and well on his way to becoming the pre-eminent
Byzantinist of his generation. In 1938, André Grabar accepted the chair of Christian
Archaeology at the École pratique des hautes études and the family moved to Paris. The young
Oleg Grabar, fluent in French and Russian, grew up in this intense, highly intellectual,
French academic environment, immersed in the ideas of his father's friends and colleagues,
including scholars such as Jean Sauvaget, Marc Bloch and Ernst Kantorowicz.
Oleg Grabar developed a philological and historical interest in Eastern cultures as a
teenager. After attempting to learn Chinese on his own, he was introduced to the
Arabic-speaking world by Sauvaget. Preparing for the École normale superieure, Grabar
attended the University of Paris from which he earned three certificats de licence in
Ancient (1948), Medieval (1950) and Modern (1950) History. When André Grabar accepted an
appointment at Dumbarton Oaks in 1948, Oleg accompanied the family to the United States. He
enrolled at Harvard University, staying in the United States when his family returned to
France, and received a BA in Medieval History in 1950. In January of 1951 Grabar enrolled at
Princeton University, planning to continue his study of history. Soon, however, Grabar's
dissatisfaction with Princeton's history program led him to move toward the department of
Art and Archaeology, and it was there that he developed his interest in Islamic art. Grabar
received an MA in 1953 and a PhD in 1955 in a special combined program of the departments of
Oriental Languages and Literature and the History of Art, with a dissertation on the art and
ceremony of the Umayyad court.
Grabar had a long academic career. He joined the faculty of the University of Michigan in
1954 as an instructor in the History of Art and progressed through the academic ranks,
becoming a full professor in 1964. Grabar left Michigan in 1969 to return to Harvard, where
he was the first professor to teach Islamic art. In 1980 he was appointed to the newly
created Aga Khan Professorship of Islamic art, a position he would hold until his retirement
from Harvard in 1990. Grabar then joined the faculty of the School of Historical Studies at
the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, from which he retired for a
second time in 1998. A charismatic teacher and inspiring mentor, Grabar supervised over 60
doctoral dissertations, literally staffing the ranks of professors, curators, and scholars
of Islamic art and architecture, in the United States and abroad, in the later twentieth
century.
A prolific scholar, Oleg Grabar authored over 20 books and 120 articles. His early work was
notable for applying a more contextualist approach to the study of Islamic art than that of
his predecessors. Informed by his historical training, Grabar generally focused on what art
could say about Islamic culture as a whole, rather than on objects solely as works of art.
In a world of ever-increasing specialization, perhaps the most striking aspect of Grabar's
scholarly output is its range: from standard reference works, like his contribution to the
Pelican History of Art series, to detailed scholarly books and articles, to lavishly
illustrated books attractive to a more general readership. He worked on areas and topics
ranging from architecture to manuscript illumination to aesthetics, from Moorish Spain to
Mughal India to Jerusalem.
In addition to teaching and publishing, Grabar took on numerous other duties, serving as an
excavator, a curator, and an administrator at various times. In 1982, Grabar founded
Muqarnas, a journal devoted to Islamic visual culture, and he had
earlier served as an editor for
Ars Orientalis (1957-1970).
He served as an advocate for all aspects of Islamic art and architecture, contemporary as
well as historical, working to rid the art history canon of its Western bias. He had
longstanding relationships with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) and with the organizations under the aegis of the Aga Khan Development
Network. He also sought to popularize Islamic art with a general audience through public
lectures and films. In recognition of his service to the study of Islamic art, Grabar was
the recipient of many awards and honors, including the Charles Lang Freer medal (2001) and
the Chairman's Award of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (2010), as well as two
Festschriften (1993 and 2008).
After his retirement in 1998, Grabar remained active in the field. He continued to publish,
lecture, and travel extensively throughout America, Europe, and the Middle East until
shortly before his death on January 8, 2011.
Open for use by qualified researchers.
Contact
Library Reproductions
and Permissions
.
Oleg Grabar papers, 1898-2009, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no.
2012.M.7
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2012m7
Gifts of Prof. Oleg and Ms. Terri Grabar. Acquired as a series of gifts between 2001 and
2012.
Much of the collection was rehoused by the Registrar as shipments were received. In
2012-2013 Ann Harrison processed and cataloged the collection. Digital materials processed
by Laura Schroffel in 2018. PCT, PSD, and tiff files were converted to jpg format for
access.
Born digital material from Series V was processed and is available online:
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/2012m7_ref879_5ib
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Born digital content will be made available through the digital preservation repository.
Two files on D4-Background information, 76.PCT and P71.PCT are not valid and access cannot
be provided. Files created in Macromedia Director or Macromedia Projector Skeleton are
preserved but for the most part access cannot be provided in the viewer. If necessary the
files can be accessed in the reading room. A single pdf file representing AKAA11.EXE is
available in the viewer and was created by taking screen snips of the program. Its content
duplicates material that was represented in the other Macromedia files being preserved. Part
of D5 duplicated D4. Duplicate material from D5 is preserved but is not available for
access.
See also the 1998 Oleg Grabar oral history interview: The practice of Islamic art history
(
Accession no. 940109, bx. 45 ).
Further Oleg Grabar archival material is held by the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, New Jersey and the University of Michigan.
In 1995 the Getty Research Institute acquired Oleg Grabar's library, which also included
volumes originally owned by his father André Grabar. Consisting of several thousand titles,
this collection, the André and Oleg Grabar Library, was integrated into the GRI Library's
general collections and can be traced through a provenance search under the collection name.
With the subsequent gift of the Oleg Grabar papers, further publications were received and
also separated to the library with the same provenance designation.
Scope and Content of Collection
The Oleg Grabar papers document the career of the scholar who transformed the field of
Islamic art history in the United States. Amassed over more than fifty years, the archive
contains thousands of photographs, slides, notes, specialized and hard-to-find research
materials, unpublished works including lectures and student theses, historical maps, and
ephemera. A small amount of material, especially photographs of Byzantine art and
architecture, originally collected by André Grabar is also included.
Focusing on Grabar's fieldwork and site documentation, the first series contains the
majority of the original material in the archive. Notes, drawings, and photographs record
Grabar's excavation work, detailed on-site studies, site surveys, and study travels. Unique
photographs, in the form of prints, negatives and slides, display images ranging from sites
in obscure areas of the Middle East or Central Asia to well-known monuments, such as the
Alhambra or the Dome of the Rock, captured with Grabar's eye for special details. The
earlier photographs are particularly important for documenting the mid-twentieth-century
state of preservation before subsequent alterations or even destruction of monuments.
Research materials assembled by Grabar for his publications and projects comprise the bulk
of the archive. Offprints and photocopies of articles form the overwhelming majority of the
material, but occasionally notes, letters received, photographs, and drawings are included.
Since almost all of the material in this series is available through other sources, its
value lies in the aggregation for ease of research and in the snapshot it presents of Oleg
Grabar's intellectual landscape. The material testifies to the scope of Grabar's interests,
covering all areas of Islamic art and architecture, and related historical and cultural
issues and literary topics in the Islamic world, as well as both its antecedents and
contemporary developments in the Classical and post-Classical worlds, in the Byzantine
sphere and the Medieval West.
Three small series relating to Grabar's writings, correspondence, and faculty and
professional service complete the archive. Included in these series are a few drafts of
lectures and publication production material, as well as a scattering of correspondence and
materials relating to two courses Grabar taught at Harvard. Grabar's work with the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the various entities
funded by the Aga Khan Development Network is more fully documented.
In order to facilitate access, the names of sites and monuments used in this finding aid
conform to the preferred usage of ArchNet, the online architectural community sponsored by
the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Other
transliterations of Arabic generally follow Grabar's usage.
Arranged in five series:
Series I. Fieldwork and site documentation, 1927-2002,
undated;
Series II. Research materials, 1898-2009,
undated;
Series III. Lectures and writings, 1988-2000,
undated;
Series IV. Correspondence, 1935-1995, undated;
Series V.
Faculty and professional service, 1975-2006, undated.
Islamic art
Islamic architecture
Color slides
Photographic prints
CD-ROMs
Negatives (Photographs)
Grabar, Oleg
Grabar, André,
1896-1990