|
Dimand, Maurice S(ven)
(b 1892; d 1986). American curator. He studied under JOSEF STRZYGOWSKI at the University of Vienna, where he earned a PhD in 1916, writing a thesis on Coptic tapestries, particularly those in the museum of the University of Lund, Sweden. In 1923 he joined the staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City as a research assistant in the Egyptian department, charged with cataloguing Coptic textiles. In 1925 he was put in charge of the new subdepartment for Islamic art in the Department of Decorative Arts, and in 1932 he became Associate Curator of Near Eastern Art. He became the first full Curator of Near Eastern Art in 1933, a position he held until retirement in 1959. Dimand developed a special interest in Islamic textiles, particularly carpets, and he catalogued the important James F. Ballard collection of carpets in St Louis, as well as negotiating gifts of carpets to the museum by such collectors as J. V. McMullan, J. Pierpont Morgan and John D. Rockefeller. Dimand wrote many articles on rugs and textiles, particularly those acquired by the museum. His handbook of Islamic decorative arts and paintings, based on the collections in the Metropolitan, went into three editions and was translated into Arabic, Persian and Urdu. He also organized six major exhibitions, including one on the ‘Polonaise’ carpets (1930) and another on Oriental carpets (1935).
|
|
There are more than 45,000 articles in The Grove Dictionary of Art.
To access the rest of this article, including the bibliography, subscribe to
www.groveart.com.
To find out more about this subject, click on a related article below and
subscribe to www.groveart.com
|
