Background
Ettinghausen, Richard was born on February 5, 1906 in Frankfurt-on-Main, Germany. Son of Edmund S. and Selma (Stern) Ettinghausen.
art historian university professor writer
Ettinghausen, Richard was born on February 5, 1906 in Frankfurt-on-Main, Germany. Son of Edmund S. and Selma (Stern) Ettinghausen.
Ettinghausen received his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Frankfurt in 1931 in Islamic history and art history.
From 1929 to 1931, he worked on the Islamic collection of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin under the direction of Ernst Kühnel and the collector/archaeologist Friedrich Sarre. In 1934, due to the rise of the Nazis, he emigrated first to Great Britain and then to the United States, where he joined the staff of Arthur Upham Pope at the Institute of Persian Art and Archaeology in New New York From 1937 to 1938, he taught his first class at the Institute of Fine Art, New York University.
In 1938 he was appointed an associate professor at the University of Michigan.
In 1944 Ettinghausen left Michigan to join the Freer Gallery. He also lectured at Princeton University.
In 1961 he was appointed chief curator of the Freer. During his tenure at the Freer, he built the collection into one of the finest collections on Islamic art in the world.
In 1966 Ettinghausen left the Freer to become Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Islamic Art at the Institute of Fine Art, New York University.
Together with the Middle East historian R. Bayly Winder he founded the Kevorkian Center the same year at New York University. Three years later, he also became the Consultative Chairman of the Islamic Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Artist At the Metropolitan, he was instrumental in installing the galleries to their sensitive arrangement. Both a Jew and an avid Islamicist, his ties to Israel found expression in his promotion of the establishment of a museum for Islamic art in Jerusalem.
Ettinghausen died of cancer.
The library in the Kevorkian Center is named in his honor.
Member College Artist Association American, American Academy Arts and Sciences, American Oriental Society, Asia House, American Research Center in Egypt, American Research Institute in Turkey (vice director), International Society Oriental Research, Medieval Academy American, American Philosophical Society, Washington Society Archeological Institute American (president 1960-1961, 63-64), Institut d’Egypte (associate), Bavarian Academy, Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, German Archeological Institute (honorary), French Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (correspondent), British Academy (honorary), American Institute Iranian Studies (honorary trustee).
Married Basia Gruliow, 1934 (deceased. Married second, Elizabeth Sgalitzer, September 22, 1945. Children: Stephen Edmund, Thomas Andrew David.