Oleg Grabar
The Islamic art and architecture community mourned the loss of one of the field’s most influential and insightful scholars. Oleg Grabar, professor emeritus of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, and Aga Khan Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard University, passed away at his home in Princeton, New Jersey, on January 8, 2011, at the age of eighty-one. Professor Grabar, who taught in the Harvard Department of Fine Arts (now History of Art and Architecture) for twenty-one years (1969–1990), was instrumental in founding Harvard’s Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture. There are few, if any, Islamicists who have not profited from the scholarly contributions of this extraordinary man, who was larger-than-life. He was the first Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Art at Harvard (1980–1990), and subsequently joined the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he remained active in research and publication until his...