From 1929 to 1931, he worked on the Islamic collection of the
Kaiser Friedrich Museum in
Berlin under the direction of
Ernst Kühnel and the collector/archaeologist
Friedrich Sarre. In 1934, due to the rise of the
Nazis, he immigrated first to
Great Britain and then to the
United States, where he joined the staff of
Arthur Upham Pope at the Institute of Persian Art and Archaeology in
New York. From 1937 to 1938, he taught his first class at the Institute of Fine Art,
New York University. In 1938 he was appointed an associate professor at the
University of Michigan. In 1944, Ettinghausen left Michigan to join the Freer Gallery. The following year he married the
art historian Elisabeth Sgalitzer. He also lectured at
Princeton University. In 1961 he was appointed chief curator of the Freer. During his tenure at the Freer, he built the collection into one of the finest collections on Islamic art in the world. He oversaw both the Ars Islamica and Ars Orientalis, while at Freer. He wrote a book "Arab Painting: Treasures of Asia, Vol IV" published by Editions d'Art Albert Skira, Geneva in 1962. In 1966, Ettinghausen left the Freer to become
Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Islamic Art at the Institute of Fine Art,
New York University. Together with the Middle East historian R. Bayly Winder he founded the
Kevorkian Center the same year at NYU. Three years later, he also became the Consultative Chairman of the Islamic Department of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the Metropolitan, he was instrumental in installing the galleries to their sensitive arrangement. His text, with
Oleg Grabar,
The Art and Architecture of Islam 650-1250 in the
Pelican History of Art series, appeared posthumously in 1987. Ettinghausen was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1974 and the
American Philosophical Society in 1976. That same year, he was awarded the
Pour le Merite by the German government. Both a
Jew and an avid
Islamicist, his ties to
Israel found expression in his promotion of the establishment of a
museum for Islamic art in
Jerusalem. Ettinghausen died of cancer in
Mercer, New Jersey on 2 April 1979. The library in the Kevorkian Center is named in his honor. ==Posthumous==