Dear Friends,
I am delighted to share the news that Ayşin Yoltar-Yıldırım will join the Harvard Art Museums as our new Norma Jean Calderwood Curator of Islamic and Later Indian Art, effective October 3, 2022.
Ayşin returns to the Harvard Art Museums after having served as the Assistant Curator for Islamic and Later Indian Art from 2013 to 2017, and prior to that, the 2011–13 Norma Jean Calderwood Curatorial Fellow. During her time as a fellow, she assisted in the planning and installation of the 2013 exhibition In Harmony: The Norma Jean Calderwood Collection of Islamic Art and contributed entries to the accompanying catalogue. As an assistant curator she took part in the preparation and installation of the new Islamic and Later Indian art galleries, which opened as part of the renovated and expanded Harvard Art Museums facility in Fall 2014. She also organized the 2017 exhibition A New Light on Bernard Berenson: Persian Paintings from Villa I Tatti, after which she edited and contributed to the 2021 publication Persian Manuscripts & Paintings from the Berenson Collection.
Ayşin attended Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey, for her bachelor’s degree in art history and archaeology, and the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University for her master’s degree and doctorate in art history. Currently the Hagop Kevorkian Associate Curator of Islamic Art at the Brooklyn Museum, in New York, she has worked since August 2017 to organize the extensive reinstallation of the Brooklyn Museum’s Arts of the Islamic World galleries, which are slated to reopen on September 30, 2022. She has previously held curatorial, research, and teaching positions as well as fellowships at several institutions in her native Turkey and the United States, including with the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University, The Barakat Trust, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She has presented at multiple conferences and taught courses on Islamic art throughout the United States and in Turkey. She is the author of the handbook Ottoman Decorative Arts, as well as several articles on Islamic arts of the book and the history of Islamic collections.
We could not be more excited to welcome Ayşin back to the Harvard Art Museums, and we look forward to working with her on shaping an institutional vision that promotes a more inclusive and expansive cultural space.
Yours,

Martha Tedeschi
Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director
Harvard Art Museums