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

“Poussin's Useless Treasures,” in Judaism and Christian Art, eds. H Kessler and D. Nirenberg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2010)

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"The Incontinence of Civic Authority in Athenian Vase-Painting,” in The World of Greek Vases, eds. V. Nørskov et al. (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2009)

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“Delphi, Olympia, and the Art of Politics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Archaic Greece, ed. H. A. Shapiro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)

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2007

“Godard Counts,” Critical Inquiry 34 (2007)

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“Poussin and the Ethics of Imitation,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 51/52 (2006)

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08/01/2006

“Connoisseurship and the Stakes of Style,” Critical Inquiry 32 (2005)

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“Reaction and Response,” Critical Inquiry 30 (2004)

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2004

“The Athenian Treasury at Delphi and the Material of Politics,” Classical Antiquity 22 (2004)

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“Space and Politics: On the Earliest Classical Athenian Gravestones,” Apollo 156 (2002)

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“Poussin, Titian, and Tradition: The Birth of Bacchus and the Genealogy of Images,” in Word & Image 18 (2002)

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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