History of Art and Architecture

Margaret Graves is a specialist in the art of the Islamic world, with a particular research focus on museum objects, the plastic arts (ceramics, metalwork, stonecarving), and the acts and contexts of making in the medieval and modern eras. Her first monograph, Arts of Allusion: Object, Ornament, and Architecture in Medieval Islam (Oxford University Press, 2018), looked at three-dimensional medieval artworks that make formal and conceptual allusions to architecture, placing these acts of material allusion into medieval Islamic intellectual history. Arts of Allusion won the 2019 book prize of the International Center of Medieval Studies and the 2021 Karen Gould prize from the Medieval Academy of America. Her current book project, Invisible Hands, explores the craft skills of ceramics faking and forgery for the nineteenth- and twentieth-century antiquities market. Other ongoing research topics include contemporary art that explores the legacies of colonial-era craft reform and heritage management in the Middle East; locating a global “golden age” of faking for the international antiquities market; and collaborations with conservators on the material lives of doctored objects. 

Before joining the department in 2023, Professor Graves taught at Indiana University.