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The Freer Medal is a lifetime achievement award that honors individuals who have made substantial contributions to the understanding of the arts of Asia throughout their career. This fall, the honor will go to Gülru Necipoğlu, the Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University’s History of Art and Architecture Department, who will be honored for her lifetime work in the arts of the Islamic world. The lecture and award ceremony will be held in the Meyer Auditorium. A reception in the Freer courtyard will follow.
Gülru Necipoğlu earned her doctorate from Harvard University in 1986 and has served there as the Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture since 1993. She holds a bachelor of arts degree from Wesleyan University and a master of arts degree from Harvard University. Necipoğlu specializes in the arts and architecture of the pre-modern Islamic lands, with a focus on the Mediterranean world and the cross-cultural and artistic exchanges between the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Grounded in rigorous archival research, her multidisciplinary studies have addressed the aesthetic interconnections of Byzantium and Renaissance Europe, pre-modern architectural practices, and the role and function of ornament in the Islamic world and beyond, offering new and highly original perspectives on the arts and architecture of the region. Throughout her illustrious career, Necipoğlu has also trained and mentored numerous students who have continued to transform the field.
Since 1993, Necipoğlu has also served as editor of Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Cultures of the Islamic World and its supplements, the preeminent publication in the field, which has transformed the study of the arts and architecture of the Islamic world. Her own publications comprise a range of subjects, from studies in monumental architecture to intricate designs on portable objects, and have changed the understanding of the arts of the Islamic world. They include Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power: The Topkapı Palace (1991), The Topkapı Scroll–Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (1995), The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (2005, 2011), Treasures of Knowledge: An Inventory of the Ottoman Palace Library (1502/3–1503/4) (2 vols, coedited by Cemal Kafadar and Cornell H. Fleischer, 2019), The Arts of Ornamental Geometry: A Persian Compendium on Similar and Complementary Interlocking Figures (2017), A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, in the Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Art History (coedited by F. Barry Flood, 2017), and Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local (coedited by Alina Payne, 2016).
In recognition of her distinguished scholarly career, Necipoğlu is an elected member of the British Academy, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio in Vicenza, Italy.
