author
Phyllis Ackerman
1893–1977
A pioneering scholar of Persian art, she helped bring Iranian architecture, design, and cultural history to a wider English-speaking audience. Her writing joins a deep knowledge of art with a gift for making it vivid and approachable.
1 Audiobook
Catalogue of the Retrospective Loan Exhibition of European Tapestries
by San Francisco Museum of Art, Phyllis Ackerman
About the author
Born in Oakland, California, in 1893, Phyllis Ackerman became an American art historian, writer, editor, and interior designer with a special focus on Persian art and architecture. She studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and later built a career that moved between scholarship and public-facing cultural work.
Ackerman is especially remembered for her work alongside Arthur Upham Pope and for her major role in the landmark multi-volume A Survey of Persian Art, published in 1939. As an editor and author, she helped shape one of the most important English-language reference works on Iranian art, making a lasting contribution to the study of the field.
She spent much of her life promoting a richer understanding of Persian culture through books, lectures, and design work. Ackerman died in Shiraz, Iran, on January 25, 1977, leaving behind a body of work that still matters to readers interested in art, history, and the meeting of cultures.