Richard Neer

Biography

Richard Neer is Barbara E. and Richard J. Franke Distinguished Service Professor of Art History, Cinema & Media Studies and the College at the University of Chicago.  From 2010 to 2018 he was the Executive Editor of Critical Inquiry, where he continues to serve as co-Editor. He is currently Director of the Franke Institute for the Humanities at the University of Chicago, and is scheduled to return to the department of Art History in 2025-26.

Neer works at the intersection of aesthetics, archaeology and the history of art in multiple fields: Classical Greek sculpture, early modern French painting, theories of style, and mid-20th century cinema.  His Ph.D. is from the University of California at Berkeley (1998), his A.B. from Harvard College (1991). He has received fellowships and awards from the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the J. Paul Getty Trust and the American Academy in Rome. His most recent books are the second edition of Art and Archaeology of the Greek World: A New History, 2500–100 BCE (Thames & Hudson, 2018); Davidson and His Interlocutors, a special issue of Critical Inquiry co-edited with Daniele Lorenzini (Winter 2019); an edited volume, Conditions of Visibility (Oxford University Press,  2019); and Pindar, Song, and Space: Toward a Lyric Archaeology, co-authored with Leslie Kurke (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), which won the 2020 PROSE Award in Classics from the Association of American Publishers. He is currently writing a book on Nicolas Poussin, the Brothers Le Nain and their contemporaries, under contract with the University of Chicago Press.

Publications

“Bourdon, Bosse and the Rules of Art,” in Classicisms, edited by Larry Norman and Anne Leonard (Chicago: University of Chicago Press/Smart Museum, 2017)

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“Pitiless Bronze,” in Art in America (December, 2015)

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“Tumbling into Time,” in Charles Ray Sculpture 1997–2014, edited by James Rondeau (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago and Basel: Kunstmuseum 2014)

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“Classical Sculpture,” in The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, 2nd edition, edited by Michael Kelly (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014)

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“Pindar Fr. 75 SM and the Politics of Athenian Space,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 54, co-authored with Leslie Kurke (2014)

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“Cosmos and Discipline,” in Heaven on Earth: Temples, Ritual, and Cosmic Symbolism in the Ancient World, edited by Deena Ragavan (Chicago: Oriental Institute 2013)

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“'A Tomb Both Great and Blameless’: Marriage and Murder on a Sarcophagus from the Hellespont,” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 61/62 (2012)

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“Sacrificing Stones: On Some Sculpture, Mostly Athenian,” in Greek and Roman Animal Sacrifice: Ancient Victims, Modern Observers, eds. C. Faraone, B. Lincoln and F. Naiden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)

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“Texte et image dans l'Antiquité,” with Susanne Muth, Agnès Rouveret and Ruth Webb, Perspective La revue de l’Institut national d’histoire de l’art (2012)

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“Jean-Pierre Vernant and the History of the Image,” Arethusa 43 (2010)

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Profiles

Andrei Pop
Andrei Pop
Modern Art and Aesthetics
Department Chair
CWAC 162 | Tuesdays 1-2pm or by appointment.
773.702.0278
Niall Atkinson
Niall Atkinson
Medieval and Renaissance Architecture and Urban History
CWAC 260
773.702.0270
Wei-Cheng Lin
Wei-Cheng Lin
Chinese Art and Architecture
Architectural Studies Advisor
CWAC 268 | Office Hours: Wednesdays 9-10am and 12-1pm
773.702.0268
2006-07
Iowa State University
Assistant Professor, East Asian Art and Architecture
Potters Wheel
Richard Neer
Ancient Greek Art and Architecture
CWAC 259
773.702.5890
Megan Sullivan
Megan Sullivan
Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art
CWAC 272
773.702.5126