Marianna Shreve Simpson
Marianna Shreve Simpson (Ph.D., Harvard University, 1978) is a specialist in Islamic art, and has published, taught and lectured widely on Islamic art in general and the arts of the book (especially Persian illustrated manuscripts) in particular. From 1980 to 1992 she worked at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, and from 1992 to 1995 served as Curator of Islamic Near Eastern Art at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. From 1995 to 2000 she was Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Islamic Art at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore and continued her affiliation with the museum through October 2001 as Visiting Curator of Islamic Art. Over the years Simpson has taught as a visiting faculty member at UCLA; Georgetown University; Princeton University; Johns Hopkins University; the University of Maryland, College Park; the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; the Maryland Institute College of Art, the University of Pennsylvania, and currently (2008-09) at the Bard Graduate Center, New York. Recent fellowships and awards include: Paul Mellon Senior Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art (2001-02); Collaborative Research Award, Getty Grant Program (June 2002 through December 2003), Senior Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities (calendar year 2003); and membership in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (fall 2004). She is currently president-elect of the Historians of Islamic Art Association for a two-year term to begin in February 2010. Dr. Simpson’s publications include Persian Poetry, Painting, and Patronage: Illustrations in a Sixteenth-Century Masterpiece (1998), Sultan Ibrahim Mirza's "Haft Awrang:" A Princely Manuscript from Sixteenth-Century Iran (1997), L'Art de l'Islam en Asie (1983) and Arab and Persian Painting in the Fogg Art Museum (1980), in addition to numerous articles.
