Textile Museum to honor Denny for lifetime achievement

The Textile Museum in Washington, D.C. will honor Walter B. Denny, professor of Art History, for lifetime achievement in textile arts with its George Hewitt Myers Award on Oct. 11.

The Myers Award, named for the museum’s founder and given by its board of trustees, will be presented during a special reception at the Turkish Embassy Chancery. The award is recognized as the highest accolade in the field of textile arts.

Denny is a scholar, author, educator and widely recognized expert on Islamic art, ceramics of the Ottoman Empire and oriental carpets. A member of the Art History faculty since 1970, he is also an adjunct professor of Near Eastern studies.

Throughout his 50-year career, Denny’s research, publications and teaching have helped cement the importance of textiles alongside other media in Islamic art history. In addition to Islamic carpets and textiles, Denny’s specialties include the study of the art and architecture of the Islamic world, in particular the artistic traditions of the Ottoman Turks, Islamic imagery in European art and issues of economics and patronage in Islamic art. His ability to synthesize expertise from these different areas and draw new, insightful conclusions sets Denny’s scholarship apart from his peers, according to the museum. In recognition of the impact of his research, Denny was awarded the Joseph V. McMullan Award for stewardship and scholarship in Islamic rugs and textiles in 2003 by the Near Eastern Art Research Center.

Denny is the co-curator for the Textile Museum’s fall exhibition “The Sultan’s Garden: The Blossoming of Ottoman Art.” The exhibition, and its accompanying catalog, chronicles how a new floral style in the mid-16th century came to embellish nearly all media produced by the Ottoman court.

Bruce P. Baganz, president of museum’s board of trustees, said, “Walter Denny has devoted his career to investigating the arts of the Islamic world – and most importantly highlighting the cultural importance of textiles. In order to appreciate the richness of historical information held by textiles, one must command knowledge not only of art history, but also political, economic andsocial history. We are honored to have Walter Denny return to co-curate another exhibition with us, and look forward to honoring his compelling scholarship this October.”

Denny began his studies at Robert College in Istanbul developing his lifelong career as an expert on the culture and history of the region. After graduating from Oberlin College, Denny began graduate studies in the department of fine arts at Harvard University. To aid his research in 16th-century Ottoman ceramics, Denny returned to Turkey on a Fulbright Fellowship at the Istanbul Technical University before earning his doctorate in 1970.

“Walter is an art historian with the rare ability to communicate his love and extensive knowledge to a wide range of people. Students, fellow academics, and the public alike can’t help but be captivated,” says Sumru Belger Krody, co-curator of the exhibition “The Sultan’s Garden.” “Walter’s research is always engaging as he constantly draws new connections.”

Between 1970 and 2000, Denny was the honorary curator of rugs & textiles at the Harvard University Art Museums, and for the past five years he has been senior consultant in the department of Islamic art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has curated numerous exhibitions, and often delivers lectures at universities, museums, and cultural centers, and recent publications include “Gardens of Paradise: Ottoman Turkish Tiles of the 15th–17th Centuries” (Istanbul, 1998); “Masterpieces of Anatolian Carpets from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, Istanbul” (Bern, 2001); “Ipek: Imperial Ottoman Silks and Velvets” (London, 2002); and “The Classical Tradition in Anatolian Carpets” (Washington D.C., 2002).