Remembering Nancy Dupree: Author, Educator, and Legend

By: the ARCH Team

 

For the past ten years, she was a  fixture in the Kabul cultural scene – at museum openings, ministerial gatherings, UNESCO events, and on Kabul University campus, Upon entering, she would be immediately recognized, enthusiastically welcomed and escorted to a front-row seat, loved and honored for her life-long dedication to the history and heritage of Afghanistan. Nancy and her second husband, archaeologist and author Louis Dupree, spent almost their entire careers in that country.

During the 1980s, Ms. Dupree managed to take an enormous archive of Afghan cultural objects, documents and books to Pakistan for safekeeping. Later, as soon as she assessed that the situation was sufficiently stable to allow it, she transported this treasure-trove back to Afghanistan and raised money to construct a building to house it. She remained extremely hands-on throughout the process, ensuring that the architecture of her Afghanistan Center on the campus of Kabul University reflected the country’s traditional styles and did not end up as one of the ugly post-war cinder-block constructions defacing other parts of the city. In a 2012 interview, Ms. Dupree explained that greater heritage education was important to impress the value of their legacy upon the country’s young people.

It is certain that for many years to come, people at Kabul gatherings will continue to crane their necks, reflexively looking for “Nancy” and missing her determined energy.

 

Links for more information on Nancy Dupree and Afghanistan: