Walter B. Denny

Walter B. Denny joined the faculty of the UM/A Art History Program in 1970. His primary field of teaching and research is the art and architecture of the Islamic world, in particular the artistic traditions of the Ottoman Turks, Islamic carpets and textiles, Islamic imagery in European art, and issues of economics and patronage in Islamic art. His recent publications include the books Gardens of Paradise: Ottoman Turkish Tiles of the 15th-17th Centuries (Istanbul, 1998); Masterpieces of Anatolian Carpets from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, Istanbul (Bern, 2001); Ipek: Imperial Ottoman Silks and Velvets (London, 2002); and The Classical Tradition in Anatolian Carpets (Washington D.C., 2002). Iznik: La céramique turque et l'art ottoman appeared in 2004 in Paris (Editions Citadelles et Mazenod), followed by English (Thames & Hudson) and German (Hirmer) versions in 2005. His chapter on Islamic art in the 7th edition of Janson's History of Art appeared in early 2006. Current projects include catalogues for two major collections of Islamic art, and a number of articles on Ottoman art and orientalism; he is also in the midst of digitizing 20,000 of his 140,000 color slides with ARTStor, a project of the Mellon Foundation.

In fall of 2007 he began working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a Senior Consultant in the Department of Islamic Art, helping to plan the museum's new Islamic galleries. Hi exhibition of the Ballard Collection of Oriental Carpets will open at the Saint Louis Art Musuem in 2008.