The fifth in the lecture series organised by the Istanbul Research Institute, Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations
(ANAMED), Boğaziçi University’s Department of History and the Friends of Yavuz Sezer in memory of the architectural
historian and academic Yavuz Sezer welcomes David J. Roxburgh,
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Islamic Art History
at Harvard University. Roxburgh’s lecture, “İran’da Dört Yıl: Myron Bement Smith ve İran’da İslam Mimarlığı Tarihi” (Four Years in Iran: Myron Bement Smith and the History of Islamic Architecture in Iran),
focusing on the fieldwork carried out in Iran between 1933 and 1937 by the American architectural historian
Myron Bement Smith, will take place on Thursday 11 December at 18.30 in the Pera Museum Auditorium.
Organised by the Istanbul Research Institute, Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations
(ANAMED), Boğaziçi University’s Department of History and the Friends of Yavuz Sezer to keep alive the intellectual legacy of
historian and academic Yavuz Sezer, who passed away in 2021, the “Yavuz Sezer Memorial Lectures” continue into their fifth year.
Each year the event hosts experts who have made important contributions to fields such as architectural history,
urban history, cultural history and the history of the book; this year’s guest is David J. Roxburgh, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor
of Islamic Art History at Harvard University.
At the event, taking place on Thursday 11 December at 18.30 in the Pera Museum Auditorium, Roxburgh
will give a lecture titled “Four Years in Iran: Myron Bement Smith and the History of Islamic Architecture in Iran”, focusing on the fieldwork
carried out in Iran between 1933 and 1937 by the American architectural historian Myron Bement Smith.
A new assessment of architectural research in Iran
While the modernising reforms of the Reza Shah Pahlavi era (1925–1941) placed art, architecture and archaeology at the heart of
nation-building, they also opened Islamic architecture to non-Muslim researchers, creating a new rivalry in the field. Myron Bement
Smith (1897–1970), an important yet forgotten figure of this early research, carried out extensive fieldwork in Iran between 1933 and 1937
with the support of the American Council of Learned Societies. He sought to collaborate with André Godard and produced monographs on
monuments of the Islamic period. After returning to the United States in 1938, he continued his academic work despite difficult circumstances;
his doctoral dissertation on vaulting in Iranian Islamic architecture, however, was never
published.
By discussing how Smith positioned architecture as a field of research and how this approach related
to other experts of his time, the lecture aims to offer a fresh perspective on the historiography of Iranian Islamic architecture.
Drawing on Smith’s archive, donated to the Smithsonian Institution in 1972, Roxburgh revisits this early period of research
and Smith’s approach to architectural history.
The event at the Pera Museum Auditorium is free of charge and no registration is required.
The event will be held in English.
