Alexander Nagel is Named Professor of Renaissance Art History at Institute of Fine Arts
August 27, 2007

Alexander Nagel has been named Professor of Renaissance Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts. A scholar of wide-ranging interests in Italian painting and sculpture as well as the historiography of the discipline, Professor Nagel will begin teaching at the Institute in the fall of 2008.

Professor Nagel earned his BA from the University of California at Berkeley and his MA and PhD from Harvard. He has been on the faculty of the University of Toronto as Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair. His publications include Michelangelo and the Reform of Art (Cambridge University Press, 2000) and numerous articles in leading journals of the field. His two forthcoming books investigate the impact of the Reformation on art-making in Italy and the modes of anachronism at work in the making and reception of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance art.

“We are delighted to welcome Alexander Nagel to the Institute’s community of scholars,” commented Mariët Westermann, Judy & Michael Steinhardt Director of the Institute. “With his extraordinary record of incisive erudition and leadership of the field, Professor Nagel will amplify the Institute’s longstanding tradition as a center of excellence for the study in the history of Italian Renaissance Art.”

Among many awards and honors, Professor Nagel has held the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, D.C., and received the 2002 Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Prize for Best Book in Renaissance Studies from the Renaissance Society of America. During the 2007-08 academic year, Professor Nagel will be a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin.

The Institute of Fine Arts of New York University celebrates its 75th Anniversary in 2007-08 as 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.