Mehmet_Ağa-Oğlu
Mehmet Aga-Oglu
Turkish art historian (1896–1949)
Mehmet Aga-Oglu (24 August 1896 – 4 July 1949), was an Azerbaijani-Turkish Islamic art historian.
Born in Erivan, Russian Caucasia (today Armenia), Mehmet earned a doctorate history, philosophy, and Islamic languages from the University of Moscow.[1] By 1921 he was at the University of Istanbul, where he studied Islamic art and Ottoman history. Whilst in Berlin, Aga-Oglu would study under Dr. Ernst Herzfeld in Near Eastern architecture.[1]
In 1926 he earned a Ph.D. and in 1927 the Islamic Department of the National Museum in Istanbul appointed Mehmet as curator.[1] In 1929, Mehmet was appointed by Wilhelm Valentiner to develop the Department of Near Eastern Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts,[1] and published his first of several articles in the DIA Bulletin. [2] 1933, he was made chair of the History of Islamic Art at University of Michigan,[1] and was the first professor of Islamic art in the United States.[3] Aga-Oglu was the first editor of the scholarly journal Ars Islamica, beginning in 1934.[4] He would teach at the University of Michigan until 1938 as a Freer Fellow and Lecturer.[1] Mehmet Aga-Oglu died in 1949.[1]