Nancy Hatch Dupree
An internationally recognized expert on the history, art, and archaeology of Afghanistan, Nancy Hatch Dupree has dedicated a lifetime to documenting and preserving Afghanistan's cultural heritage. Mrs. Dupree arrived in Kabul in 1962. For the next 15 years, she and her late husband, Louis Dupree, a renowned archaeologist and scholar of Afghanistan's culture and history, traveled throughout Afghanistan, conducting archaeological excavations. Mrs. Dupree wrote five guidebooks to Afghanistan (one of which became the inspiration for Tony Kushner's play Homebody/Kabul) covering all major archaeological and historic sites, as well as a well-known guide to the National Museum. That book was the closest thing the Museum had to an illustrated inventory to its rare and priceless collection.
Mrs. Dupree has long been associated with the National Museum and with the Bactrian Gold. Many pieces in the Museum’s collection have been stolen due to the destruction of the Museum and the plunder of its collection during the Afghan War Years and under the rule of the Taliban. In fact, Nancy Dupree has quipped that her book, A Guide to the National Museum, has come to be used a shopping list for those in international black market art trade. She has continued to educate both Afghans and the world about Afghanistan’s cultural and artistic heritage. Since 1989, she has published over 250 pieces on a wide variety of topics relating to the restoration of Afghanistan and its culture.
Today, Nancy Hatch Dupree is Director of the Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University, a nonprofit organization currently holding 80,000 items related to Afghanistan. This resource center is an active working archive sharing information on a daily basis with policy makers of today and tomorrow. Its purpose is to facilitate research on institution building, program design and project implementation.
Click here to purchase a copy of Nancy's latest volume, Afghanistan Over a Cup of Tea.
