Former Harvard University curator Stuart Cary Welch never got a Ph.D. in his specialty, but that didn't stop this self-described "autodidact" from becoming a renowned expert on Islamic and Indian art, the Boston Globe reports.

Now Harvard will benefit even more from his expertise, as Welch gives 300 works of art from his personal collection to the university's Arthur M. Sackler Museum.

A significant portion of the gift consists of art from the Rajasthan area of India, making the Sackler holdings the most important collection of Rajasthani art in the U.S., James Cuno, director of the Harvard University Art Museums, told the Globe.

Welch attended Harvard as an undergraduate and graduate student, receiving a master's in ancient art. He joined the Islamic Art department at the Fogg Art Museum, where he became curator in 1976. He also served as the head of the Islamic Art department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Welch retired in 1995.

"Cary is in the tradition of a great, noble amateur whose work as a collector and a scholar really advanced the field," Cuno told the Globe. When he began studying Islamic art, few others were really concentrating on the field.

"There's a small crowd of artists, people who had been forgotten, or not been recognized," Welch told the Globe. "It's a field in which people had not been close enough to deal with the great figures. Imagine knowing of Italian Renaissance art without knowing Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo."

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