Kamer Aga-Oglu

The Williams Collection of Far Eastern Ceramics: Tonnancour Section

SP 2

Kamer Aga-Oglu was curator of the Museum’s Asian collections from 1945 to 1974. An extraordinary scholar, Aga-Oglu singlehandedly transformed the study of Asian ceramics, focusing particularly on understudied Asian trade wares in the Museum’s collections. A specialist in Far Eastern art history, she devoted her life’s work to researching the division’s outstanding collection of Asian ceramics. Throughout her entire tenure at the Museum, Kamer Aga-Oglu was the Museum’s only woman curator. Her catalogs of the Williams Collection contain dozens of photographs and detailed descriptions of the pieces.

The Williams Collection of Far Eastern Ceramics: Chinese, Siamese, and Annamese Ceramic Ware Selected from the Collection of Justice and Mrs. G. Mennen Williams in the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology

Kamer Aga-Oglu

SP 1

Kamer Aga-Oglu was curator of the Museum’s Asian collections from 1945 to 1974. An extraordinary scholar, Aga-Oglu singlehandedly transformed the study of Asian ceramics, focusing particularly on understudied Asian trade wares in the Museum’s collections. She described for the first time a whole new range of East Asian ceramics that until then were unknown, even among specialists, and she documented the pre-European movement of these ceramics throughout the Pacific and as far as Turkey and East Africa. Her catalogs of the Williams Collection contain dozens of photographs and detailed descriptions of the pieces.