Esin Atıl (June 11, 1938 – February 20, 2020) was a Turkish-American historian of

Islamic art Islamic art is a part of Islamic culture and encompasses the visual arts produced since the 7th century CE by people who lived within territories inhabited or ruled by Muslim populations. Referring to characteristic traditions across a wide ra ...

and

curator A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...

of Islamic art at the

Freer Gallery of Art The Freer Gallery of Art is an art museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. focusing on Asian art. The Freer and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery together form the National Museum of Asian Art in the United States. The Freer and Sac ...

Education

Esin Atıl graduated from the American College for Girls in Istanbul 1956 with BA degree. She received a second BA degree from the

Western College for Women Western College for Women, known at other times as Western Female Seminary, The Western and simply Western College, was a women's and later coed liberal arts college in Oxford, Ohio, between 1855 and 1974. Initially a seminary, it was the host of ...

in 1958. She subsequently attended the

Cranbrook Academy of Art The Cranbrook Educational Community is an education, research, and public museum complex in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. This National Historic Landmark was founded in the early 20th century by newspaper mogul George Gough Booth. It consists of Cr ...

where she studied painting and pottery. Atıl continued to graduate-level studies at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

where she received her Ph.D. in 1969 with a thesis titled ''Surname-i Vehbi: An Eighteenth Century Ottoman Book of Festivals'' under the supervision of

Oleg 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. Academic career O ...

Career

Subsequent to her graduation, Atıl was appointed in 1970 to the position of the curator of Near Eastern Art at the

(

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

) in Washington, D.C., a position that she held until 1987. She continued working at the Freer Gallery in the position of Historian of Islamic Art until her retirement in 1993, following which she was appointed as a Research Associate. Her career is marked by a series of seminal and groundbreaking exhibitions of Islamic art, almost all of them accompanied by authoritative exhibition catalogues. A specialist in the Ottoman art, history of Ottoman art, Esin Atıl was the curator for the first major exhibition of the subject held at the National Gallery of Art in 1987. The exhibition was acclaimed as a milestone event, receiving both positive academic reviews and news coverage. The success of this exhibition especially led her to receive an honorary doctorate degree in 1987 from Boğaziçi University, citing her important contributions to the study of Turkish culture and history by means of seminal exhibitions and publications. In the same year, she also received the Grand Award for Culture and Art from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Turkey.

References

External links

Honoring Esin Atıl, a workshop held at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art
{{DEFAULTSORT:Atil, Esin Historians of Islamic art American women curators Turkish art curators Smithsonian Institution people American people of Turkish descent Alumni of Arnavutköy American High School for Girls 1937 births 2020 deaths Historians of Ottoman art American art curators 21st-century American women