Elizabeth S. Ettinghausen, a scholar of early Christian and Byzantine art as well as an authority on Islamic Art, died peacefully in Princeton, NJ on June 12 after a brief illness, weeks short of her 98th birthday.
Even in her later years and as little as 1 ½ years ago, she traveled extensively for art historical pursuits on four continents including Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. She led museum tours as a lecturer and guide in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa for the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA), Asia Society (NY) and Princeton University Art Museum. Two of her trips were Mediterranean cruises under the auspices of the Harvard Alumni Association to study Moorish Spain and Western and Northern African historical sites.
She was a speaker at numerous international conferences presenting on the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa on subjects related to the characteristic features of Islamic Art and architecture as well as on the region’s history and archaeology. Her presentations were delivered as independent lectures or as a member of panels of speakers at conferences in Switzerland, Turkey, Iran (at the First International Conference and Exhibition on Iranian Carpets by invitation of the Iranian government) and Germany as well as at various meetings in the US including the Metropolitan Museum (NY), Kevorkian Center of Middle Eastern Studies at NYU, Art Department at Harvard University (MA), Near Eastern Center and the School of Architecture of the University of Washington, Cincinnati Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Frye Museum of Seattle, Program in Near Eastern Studies and the Art Museum at Princeton University, Spokane Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, American Friends of Aphrodisias (Turkey) and at various university alumni associations and rug and textile societies throughout the US.
She held many honorary positions including Fellow for Life and member of the Islamic Art Department Visiting Committee at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, member of the Collections Committee of the Harvard University Art Museum, Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute Honorary Trustee of the Textile Museum (Washington, DC), Member of the Directorate and Program Committee of the American Turkish Society (NY)and board member of several organizations including the Princeton Research Forum, Princeton Middle East Society, Hajji Baba Club (NY) and Near Eastern Art Research Center (Washington, DC). She was also a Past President of the Princeton Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, the American Friends of Aphrodisias and the Princeton Rug Society. She had a lifelong interest in music and served as a founding member of the Princeton chapter of the American Recorder Society and sang for many years in the Trinity Church (Princeton) Adult Choir. For many years, she was an active docent at the Princeton University Art Museum.
She was an active researcher in many locations beginning in the 1950s at the Middle East Institute (Washington, DC) where she arranged a traveling exhibition for the US Information Agency (USIA) on “The Influence of the Near East on American Design” which was viewed in many Near Eastern and North African countries. She was later a visiting fellow of the German Archaeological Institute (Berlin, Germany). In the 1980s she was a member of the staff at the NYU-sponsored excavations at Aphrodisias in Western Turkey where she organized and catalogued various pottery lamps from the Classical and Byzantine periods. Many of these objects were then exhibited with her oversight and guidance at the Aphrodisias Museum in Turkey. She served as a research fellow at the Program in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University during which time she organized and curated an exhibition on “The Near Eastern City since 1800” presented at the Princeton University Art Museum in 1970.
In earlier years, she was an analyst at the US Department of State in the 1940s and, in 1943-1945, a junior fellow at Harvard University’s Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC. There, she examined the Byzantine architecture of Constantinople/Istanbul focusing on Byzantine glazed tiles. It was at Dumbarton Oaks that she met and later married in 1945 Dr. Richard Ettinghausen, then Curator of Near Eastern Art at the Freer Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian Institution and later the Consultative Chairman of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Hagop Kevorkian Professo Islamic Art at the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU. Having predeceased her in 1979, German-born Richard Ettinghausen was a path-breaking scholar of Islamic Art whose many articles and important books charted new directions for the study of his chosen field which were to foster the universal acclaim in which the art of the Islamic world is held today.
Throughout her adult life and even in her last weeks, she enjoyed contact with her family and numerous friends and colleagues in art and music from around the US and many foreign countries. She had an especially engaging manner as she would interact, if possible, in the native tongue of her acquaintances, whether by her fluency in German, French, Turkish, Persian (or English) or by her knowledge of a few phrases in many other languages. Whereas her conversations centered on serious subjects such as recently opened museum exhibitions, the latest musical concerts or current events, she graced the discussions with her sense of humor while at the same time adding her special critique or offering her spontaneous advice on the topic at hand.
Born in Vienna, Austria in 1918, Elizabeth Ettinghausen grew up in a medical family including her physician father, brother and sister. She studied at the University of Vienna (Austria), but with the rising Nazi movement, she and her family fled to Turkey. There, at the University of Istanbul, her father became director of the Institute of Radiology and Biophysics and she completed her PhD in Early Christian and Byzantine Art in 1943. In the same year, she and her family immigrated to the US by convoy across the Atlantic arriving through Ellis Island, NY.
In addition to her husband, she is predeceased by her brother Brigadier General George Sgalitzer, MD, US Army Medical Corps, Ret. and her sister, Gerda Sgalitzer, MD.
She is survived by her two sons, Stephen (Beth) Ettinghausen, MD, a surgical oncologist in Rochester, NY, and Thomas (Burul) Ettinghausen, Senior Advisor, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates as well as four grandchildren (Zachary and Maxfield Ettinghausen of Rochester, NY; Layla and Kai Ettinghausen of London, UK) and five nieces and nephews.
A Memorial Service is being planned for the Fall of 2016 in Princeton. At Elizabeth’s request, donations may be made in her memory to her other passion – the environment – including the Audubon Society, The Wilderness Society and the Environmental Defense Fund.
