DR. THOMAS CROW APPOINTED ROSALIE SOLOW PROFESSOR OF MODERN ART

24 October 2006

Mariet Westermann, the Judy and Michael Steinhardt Director of NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, today announced that Thomas Crow, Director of the Getty Research Institute and one of the world’s most prominent art historians, will join the Institute as the Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art. His appointment will be effective September 2007; till then, he will remain at the Getty Research Institute.

Dr. Westermann said, “This is a distinguished professorship in one of the most distinguished art history programs in the world; finding a suitable scholar to occupy it is no easy feat. In Thomas Crow, we have found an art historian of extraordinary scholarly achievement and breadth. Moreover, he has a record of great intellectual programming at the Getty Research Institute. The Institute of Fine Arts is proud to bring him to New York, proud to return him to a university setting, and proud to have him as a colleague. We are so pleased he is joining us.”

Since becoming Director of the Getty Research Institute in 2000, Crow has led a vigorous program of visiting fellowships, conferences, exhibitions, and publications. He notably diversified the range of disciplines represented and extended collaborative relations with institutions nationally and internationally. During this time, he has also held a professorial appointment at the University of Southern California. Previously, he was Chair of the Department of the History of Art at Yale University, Chair of Art at Sussex University in the U.K., and a faculty member at the University of Michigan, Princeton University, and the University of Chicago. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Thomas Crow’s scholarly record is one of great breadth and intellectual distinction. His scholarship has spanned the “long” history of modern and contemporary art—from eighteenth-century France to present-day America. His first book, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris (1985), won the Charles Rufus Morey prize, among other honors. That study was followed by the path-clearing Emulation: Making Artists for Revolutionary France (1995).

Deeply interested in the complex formation of modernity and its art, Crow has published foundational statements on art’s roles in modern society and culture, including Modern Art in the Common Culture (1996) and The Rise of the Sixties: American and European Art in the Era of Dissent (1996; newly issued in 2005). He has recently co-authored exhibition catalogues on Gordon Matta-Clark (2003) and Robert Smithson (2004).

Thomas Crow has also made major contributions to the critical historiography of art history and its entwinement with criticism. The Intelligence of Art (1999) examines this question through case studies from Romanesque art to Rococo painting. “The Practice of Art History in America,” an essay commissioned by the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, was published in its journal Daedalus this year. He has numerous other publications and his works have been translated widely.

Among his many honors and awards, Professor Crow has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, and the Stanford Institute for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is a member of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences and a contributing editor to Artforum.

The Institute of Fine Arts is one of the world’s leading graduate schools and research centers in art history, archaeology, and conservation. The Institute has a permanent faculty unrivalled in the breadth and depth of its expertise and unparalleled in the range of its adjunct lecturers from top museums, research institutes, and conservation studios. Since the Institute awarded its first PhD in 1933, more than 1600 degrees have been conferred. A high proportion of alumni hold international leadership roles as professors, curators, museum directors, archaeologists, conservators, critics, and institutional administrators.