Mariet Westermann, 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.
Mariet Westermann, 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 2000, Dr. Crow has been the director of the Getty Research Institute which “exists to bring together all the resources and activities required to advance understanding of the visual arts taken in their widest possible significance” - and a professor of the history of art at the University of Southern California. From 1996 to 2000, he was the Robert Lehman Professor of the History of Art at Yale University, and chair of the department from 1997 onwards. From 1990 to 1996, he was a professor and chair in the history of art at the University of Sussex. From 1986 to 1990, he was an associate professor of the history of art at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. From 1980 to 1986, he was an assistant professor of art and archeology at Princeton University. From 1978 to 1980, he was an assistant professor of the history of art at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Crow is the author of many books and journal articles, including Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985); Modern Art in the Common Culture (Yale University Press, 1996); The Rise of the Sixties: American and European Art in the Era of Dissent (Weidenfeld and Nicolson/Harry Abrams, 1996; Yale University Press and Laurence King, 2005); Emulation: Making Artists for Revolutionary France ((Yale University Press, 1995); revised edition with new afterword, Emulation: David, Drouais, and Girodet in the Art of Revolutionary France (2006)); “The Practice of Art History in America,” Daedalus (Spring 2006); and “Marx to Sharks: The Art-Historical ’80s,” Artforum 41/8 (2003), among many others.
Dr. Crow is the recipient of many honors and awards, including a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship; the Charles Rufus Morey Prize of the College Art Association; the Eric Mitchell Prize for the best first book in the history of art; being named the Durning-Lawrence Lecturer at University College, London; being named the Clifford Lecturer, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies; and being named a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, among others. He is a contributing editor to Artforum and a member of the National Committee for the History of Art.
He received his bachelor’s magna cum laude from Pomona College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles.