Named for the National Museum of Asian Art’s founder, Charles Lang Freer, the medal has been awarded since its inauguration in 1956. The Freer Medal honors people who, over the course of a career, have contributed in a substantial way to the understanding of the arts of Asia. In 2023, as part of the Museum’s centennial celebrations, the Charles Lang Freer Medal was awarded to Gülru Necipoğlu, the Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University’s History of Art and Architecture Department, for her lifetime of work in the arts of the Islamic world. This is the first time that a scholar of Middle Eastern descent has received the award, and only two other women have received the Freer Medal previously.
Gülru Necipoğlu earned her doctorate from Harvard University in 1986 and has served there as the Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture since 1993. Necipoğlu specializes in the arts and architecture of the pre-modern Islamic lands, with a focus on the Mediterranean world and the cross-cultural and artistic exchanges between the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In recognition of her distinguished scholarly career, Necipoğlu is an elected member of the British Academy, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio in Vicenza, Italy.
- Masoud Ariankhoo