The National Museum of Asian Art has announced its 2023 recipients of the Freer Medal, a lifetime achievement award that honors individuals who have substantially contributed to the understanding of the arts of Asia throughout their career. This year, the institution’s centennial, the honor will go to Vidya Dehejia, the Barbara Stoler Miller Professor Emerita of Indian and South Asian Art at Columbia University, and 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. They...

The International Journal of Islamic Architecture and the Award Jury is pleased to announce the 2022 winners of the Professor Hasan-Uddin Khan Article Award.

Award Winner: Laura Parodi, "Kabul, a Forgotten Mughal Capital: Gardens, City, and Court at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century," Muqarnas 38, 2021, pp. 79-119

Honourable Mention: Mikael Muehlbauer, "From Stone to Dust:...

Muqarnas 38 begins by considering a curious Kufic-inscribed block in the eleventh-century church of Wuqro Cherqos in Ethiopia. Mikael Muehlbauer offers a biography of this object from its inception as an inscribed arch in a Fatimid great mosque to its medieval use as a chancel and luxury item. The next two articles focus on India, explaining the function of a fifteenth-century monument and manuscript, respectively. Mohit Manohar tackles issues of race in analyzing the Chand Minar, arguing that this stone minaret was built to commemorate the role of African and...

Congratulations to Professor Gülru Necipoğlu for winning an honorable mention at the Middle East Librarians’ Association (MELA). This was awarded for the Muqarnas supplement she co-authored with Professors Cemal Kafadar and Cornell H. Fleischer, titled “Treasures of Knowledge: An Inventory of the Ottoman Palace Library (1502/3-1503/4)”

Professor Necipoğlu also recently won a lifelong achievement award for her “Contribution to Architecture” (Mimarlığa Katkı...

HIAA Board Member Simon Rettig recently sat for an interview with Gülru Necipoğlu, Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Art and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. Prof. Necipoğlu discussed the state of the field of Islamic art and the evolutions she noticed over the past decades.

You can read the...

Two of Professor Necipoğlu’s publications have recently been digitized and made available to view for free online. Details and links are below.

Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power: The Topkapi Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Gülru Necipoğlu, 1992)

Muqarnas 37

Gülru Necipoğlu (Editor) and Maria J. Metzler (Managing Editor)

Muqarnas 37 introduces new research on Islamic material culture ranging from Abbasid period mosaics to the early twentieth-century art market. Featured articles include Charles Melville’s introduction of a chronicle that sheds light on the architectural program of Shah ʿAbbas I, in...

The British Academy has elected Professor Gülru Necipoğlu as a Corresponding Fellow at the Annual General Meeting on July 23, 2020. She is one of 86 new Fellows welcomed this year.

As a Corresponding Fellow, Professor Necipoğlu is affiliated with the disciplinary section History of Art and Music. Sections meet twice a year and discuss a range of matters about the Academy and the disciplines; they also conduct electoral business. The British...

... Read more about Gülru Necipoğlu's The Arts of Ornamental Geometry: A Persian Compendium on Similar and Complementary Interlocking Figures is an award winner for the 26th World Award for Book of the Year of Iran