Thomas Whittemore (January 2, 1871 – June 8, 1950) was an American scholar and archaeologist who founded theByzantine Institute of America. His close personal relationship withMustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder and the first president of theTurkish Republic, enabled him to gain permission from theTurkish government to start the preservation of theHagia Sophia mosaics in 1931.
Thomas Whittemore was born in theCambridgeport neighborhood ofCambridge,Massachusetts, on January 2, 1871. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature fromTufts College in 1894. He taught English Composition at Tufts for a year and then studied atHarvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He also taught courses in the fine arts at New York University and Columbia University.[1]
From 1911 until his death Whittemore served as American representative on theEgyptian Exploration Fund.[2]
Whittemore worked in various capacities to provide relief to Russian refugees during World War I and following theRussian Revolution.[3] He spent 8 months in Russia in 1915-16 and reported on conditions there when he returned to New York to organized shipments of supplies. He was a member of the U.S.-based Russian Relief Commission and a committee for war relief organized byGrand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaovna.[4]
In 1929, Whittemore founded the Byzantine Library of Paris and, in 1930, theByzantine Institute of America, whose mission was to "conserve, restore, study, and document" the monuments and artworks of the Byzantine world.[5] The list of sponsors of the new venture, according to renowned architectural historianWilliam L. MacDonald, "reads like a who's who of art, aristocracy, and money. Whittemore's message was that Christian art in the Near East, especially in Constantinople, was unknown, utterly magnificent, equal or superior to Western medieval art, and ought to be revealed and understood."[6] In 1931, Whittemore traveled with the institute to Istanbul with the permission ofMustafa Kemal Atatürk to oversee the removal of plaster covering the Byzantine mosaics inHagia Sophia. Of the radical and sudden transformation of Hagia Sophia from an active mosque to a secular museum in 1931 he wrote: "Santa Sophia was a mosque the day that I talked to him. The next morning, when I went to the mosque, there was a sign on the door written in Ataturk's own hand. It said: 'The museum is closed for repairs'"[7]
In 1934, Harvard University appointed him keeper of Byzantine coins and seals at theFogg Art Museum for a year.[8] He also accepted a presidential appointment to represent the United States at the Byzantine Conference in Sofia in September of that year.[9]
His work was widely reported in the United States. In 1942, theNew York Times noted his return to Istanbul for his "ninth year in uncovering Byzantine mosaics in the St. Sophia Museum".[10]
Beginning in 1948, he sponsored a program for the restoration of the mosaics in theChora Church in Istanbul.[11]
On June 8, 1950, he suffered a heart attack while visiting the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. He was buried inMount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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