Esin Atıl

Esin Atıl (June 11, 1938 – February 20, 2020) was a Turkish-American historian of Islamic art and curator of Islamic art at the Freer Gallery of Art.

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 in 1958. She subsequently attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art where she studied painting and pottery.^[1] Atıl continued to graduate-level studies at the University of Michigan^[2] 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.^[3]

Career

Subsequent to her graduation, Atıl was appointed in 1970 to the position of the curator of Near Eastern Art at the Freer Gallery of Art (Smithsonian Institution) 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.^[4] Her career is marked by a series of seminal and groundbreaking exhibitions of Islamic art, almost all of them accompanied by authoritative exhibition catalogues.^[5]

A specialist in the 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.^[6] The exhibition was acclaimed as a milestone event, receiving both positive academic reviews^[7][8] and news coverage.^[9][10][11] 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.^[12] In the same year, she also received the Grand Award for Culture and Art from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Turkey.^[13]

References

1. Booth Conroy, Sarah (January 26, 1987). "Serving a Sultan's Memory: Curator Esin Atıl". The Washington Post. Retrieved 23 July 2021.
2. "Who's Who in Turkish Art and Culture". Turkish Cultural Foundation. Retrieved 11 June 2020.
3. Atıl, Esin. "'SURNAME-I VEHBI': AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY OTTOMAN BOOK OF FESTIVALS". University of Michigan Library. University of Michigan. Retrieved 2020-07-11.
4. "Who's Who in Turkish Art and Culture". Turkish Cultural Foundation. Retrieved 23 July 2021.
5. Bloom, Jonathan; Blair, Sheila S. (2009). Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art & Architecture. Oxford University Press. p. 233. ISBN 9780195309911. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
6. "The Age of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent". National Gallery of Art. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
7. Fisher, Carol Garrett (July 1990). "The Age of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent by Esin Atıl". Middle East Studies Association Bulletin. 24 (1): 81–82. doi:10.1017/S0026318400022768. JSTOR 23060828. S2CID 164496677.
8. Grabar, Oleg (1989). "An Exhibition of High Ottoman Art". Muqarnas. 6: 1–11. doi:10.2307/1602275. JSTOR 1602275.
9. Kessler, Pamela (23 January 1987). "Suleyman the Magnificence". The Washington Post. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
10. Richard, Paul (25 January 1987). "Surveying the Splendors of the Age of Suleyman". The Washington Post. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
11. Russell, John (26 January 1987). "Art: 'The Age of Suleyman'". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
12. "Fahri Doktora". Boğaziçi University. Retrieved 10 June 2020.
13. "Who's Who in Turkish Art and Culture". Turkish Cultural Foundation. Retrieved 10 June 2020.

External links

• Honoring Esin Atıl, a workshop held at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art