Arthur Upham Pope (February 7, 1881 – September 3, 1969) was an American scholar, art historian, and architecture historian. He was an expert on historical Persian art, and he was the editor of the Survey of Persian Art (1939). Pope was also a university professor of philosophy and aesthetics, an archaeologist, photographer, museum director, interior designer, and the co-founder of an international scholarly organization.

Education and early career

Born in Phenix in West Warwick, Rhode Island on February 7, 1881.

He left Berkeley in December 1917 under a cloud caused by his relationship with student Phyllis Ackerman.

Pope's museum clients included the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and Philadelphia Museum of Art. He also advised wealthy individual collectors including Calouste Gulbenkian, William Randolph Hearst, George Hewitt Myers, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. and writing and lecturing about a new museum plan for San Francisco. He was a consultant on planning for an art museum and opera house in the Civic Center of San Francisco in the mid-1920s.

In 1924 Pope and Ackerman bought the house in San Mateo, California they called "Scholars' Cottage" from its architect and first occupant, Ernest Coxhead. They sold it in 1943 and it later became a state and national historic landmark.

Continued Persian pursuits

Pope made his first trip to Iran in the spring of 1925. He gave a speech urging Iranians to appreciate the architecture of their past and to use it as inspiration for modern buildings. Reza Khan, then prime minister and later Shah of Iran, heard the speech, met Pope, and began taking a personal interest in Persian architectural restoration and revival. He authorized Pope to enter key mosques to study and photograph their architecture and became a lifelong supporter of Pope's pursuits in the field.

In 1926, Pope helped design the Persian pavilion and organized an exhibition of Persian art for the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The Persia Pavilion, based on the Masjed-e Shah (King's Mosque) in Isfahan, won a gold medal. where they made extensive use of Middle Eastern kilims as well as Native American artefacts.

In 1928, Pope founded the American Institute for Persian Art and Archaeology, which was incorporated in New York City in 1930 and later became the Asia Institute. He enlisted other scholars to teach and conduct research under the auspices of the institute, and he led numerous trips to Iran from 1929 to 1939 to photograph art and architecture and participate in archaeological excavations. The six-volume Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present was published by Oxford Press in 1938–39, and Pope and his colleagues arranged for several exhibitions of Persian art in the U.S. and Europe to coincide with the publication. Pope was a pivotal figure in the organisation of the highly successful International Exhibition of Persian Art that opened at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in January 1931; in particular he was instrumental in obtaining items on loan from many sources, including the Iranian Crown Jewels. Their remains lie in a mausoleum on the bank of the Zayandeh River in Isfahan close to Khaju Bridge, a special mausoleum that was erected on the order of the Shah.

Legacy

thumb|right|Mausoleum of Arthur Pope and his wife Phyllis Ackerman in [[Isfahan]]

The Asia Institute became a part of the Pahlavi University and gradually declined, especially after the Islamic revolution in 1979. Eventually, the Bulletin of the Asia Institute was revived in Michigan in 1987.

Pope began taking photographs for his Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present in 1929 with a camera he had purchased in Cairo. An amateur cameraman who became, as Noël Siver describes him, 'a top-notch photographer', Pope overcame difficulties with weather conditions, opposition to his visiting mosques as a non-Muslim, and having to process all his negatives before leaving the country. He wrote about these problems in an article for Photography (London), vol. 5, no. 49 (September 1936) graphically entitled, “Killed for Photographing a Fountain! Camera as a Record of World-Famous Persian Architecture”. Exhibitions of his Persian photographs were mounted at art galleries and museums in cities such as New York, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, London, Copenhagen, Chicago, San Francisco, Jerusalem and Leningrad during the 1930s to great acclaim.

In 2010 the Art Institute of Chicago, one of the museums Pope advised, presented an exhibition, "Arthur Pope and a New Survey of Persian Art", curated by Yuka Kadoi.

In conjunction with the exhibition the museum held a symposium in which international scholars of Persian art discussed the life, achievements and influence of Arthur Upham Pope.

According to Noël Siver in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, However, Frye's death coincided with efforts to improve Iran-United States relations, and the planned burial became highly controversial. During the associated protests by Islamic hardliners in April 2014, the Pope-Ackerman tomb was vandalized with extensive painted words. After Frye's family waited more than two months for approval to proceed with the burial, they decided to have his body cremated in Boston.

Selected publications

  • Arthur Upham Pope introducing Persian Architecture, Tehran : Published under the auspices of the Farah Pahlavi Cultural Foundation & the Festival of Arts Centre by Soroush Press, 1976
  • Persian Architecture, London : Thames & Hudson, 1965
  • Maxim Litvinoff, London : Martin Secker and Warburg, 1943
  • A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present, six volumes published under the auspices of the American Institute for Iranian Art and Archaeology, with Phyllis Ackerman, London & New York : Oxford University Press, 1938–1939
  • An Introduction to Persian Art : since the seventh century AD, London : Peter Davies, 1930
  • Persian Art and Culture, New York; San Francisco : New Orient Society of America, 1928

See also

  • Committee for National Morale

References

Sources

  • Robert Lewis Taylor, "Profile: Under the Rug," The New Yorker, July 14 and 21, 1945.
  • Arthur Upham Pope Papers, New York Public Library..
  • Yuka Kadoi (ed.), Arthur Upham Pope and A New Survey of Persian Art (Brill, 2016).