Oleg Grabar

French born American art historian (1929–2011)

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 in the Western academe.

Oleg Grabar was the son of André Grabar. He attended the University of Paris, where he studied ancient, medieval, and modern history, before moving to the US in 1948. He became emeritus from Harvard in 1990, and then joined the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, becoming emeritus there in 1998. According to the President of the Historians of Islamic Art Association, "Grabar transformed the fields of Islamic art, architecture and archaeology through his myriad scholarly works, general textbooks, and through training and inspiring many generations of undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Michigan and at Harvard." Early in his career, Grabar spent two years (1953 and 1960–1961) at the American School of Oriental Research in Jordanian ruled East Jerusalem. His work Penser l'art islamique : une esthétique de l'ornement denotes also reflections on the nature of Islamic art.

Grabar was the son of the renowned Byzantinist André Grabar. Oleg Grabar and his wife Terry, a retired English professor, were married for 59 years. They had two children, Nicolas and Anne Louise, and three grandchildren, Henry, Olivia, and Margaret.

Grabar received many honors during his lifetime, including the Charles Lang Freer Medal in 2001 and, in 2010, the Chairman's Award at the Aga Khan Award for Architecture ceremony in Doha, where he made what was perhaps his last public speech. He was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.