History of Art and Architecture

Lâl Verda Karaoğlu specializes in the arts of the Ottoman Empire. She is interested in exploring religious objects and their iconography in late Ottoman and early Turkish Republic visual culture, focusing on their role in mediating vernacular traditions, mystical practices, and ideology. Some of the objects she is fascinated by include Qur’anic amulets, inscribed textiles, calligraphic hilye panels, prayer rugs, talismanic shirts and scrolls, and relics of the Prophet Muhammad.

Verda holds a B.A. in Art History and Political Science from Grinnell College, where she wrote a thesis on the Sacred Relics Chamber in Istanbul’s Topkapı Palace, analyzing how the evolving Turkish nation materializes in museum displays through the evolution of Ottoman aesthetic consciousness and its reimagining under Turkey’s AKP policies.

Before joining Brown, Verda worked in the Textiles Department at the Art Institute of Chicago cataloging and documenting the museum’s collection of 17th- to 20th-century Ottoman domestic textiles.