Virginia Gray Henry KHS 1964

Virginia Gray Henry KHS ’64 has led a remarkable life. Her lifelong passion for artistic and spiritual knowledge has taken her throughout North Africa and the Middle East; Ms. Henry has taught art history and world religions in New York City, Cairo, Cambridge, England, and Danville, Kentucky. In addition to her efforts as an educator, Ms. Henry has contributed substantially to scholarship in the fields of art history and world religions by publishing award-winning books by scholars from around the world.

Ms. Henry is a 1961 graduate of the Kentucky Home School, where she claims Mrs. Hassold’s Art History class sparked a lifelong interest in the subject. She received her BA in Art History from Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied with Joseph Campbell, and continued her studies at the University of Michigan, where she wrote her master’s thesis on Islamic art and architecture. Her doctoral dissertation on Mesopotamian sacred art is currently in progress.

Ms. Henry traveled extensively following her college graduation in 1965—in a wonderful story, she relates that her daughter was delivered by a group of tattooed Bedouin women. Ms. Henry lived and taught in Cairo during much of the 1970s, but her first venture into publishing began when she and her family moved to Cambridge, England. The Islamic Texts Society, which she co-founded, employed scholars from around the world to translate the great spiritual classics from Arabic into English.

Since returning to Louisville in the early ’90s, Ms. Henry has worked closely with the Thomas Merton Center, where she is a member of the Programs Committee. In 1994 she was instrumental in arranging the Dalai Lama’s visit to Louisville and the Abbey of Gethsemani, and she also coordinated the 1999 Merton and Sufism Conference, an international conference held at Bellarmine College. Ms. Henry is currently the director of Fons Vitae, which publishes a wide range of works on spiritual and artistic topics; one of Fons Vitae’s most recent books, Merton and Sufism, the Untold Story, has been particularly well-received.

In recognition of her outstanding accomplishments, Virginia Gray Henry, Kentucky Home School Class of 1964, was inducted into the Kentucky Country Day School Hall of Fame on June 10, 2000.

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