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

Art & Archaeology of the Greek World: A New History, c. 2500–c. 150 BCE

Second Edition. London and New York: Thames and Hudson
,
2019

Conditions of Visibility

Oxford: Oxford University Press
,
2019

Pindar, Song, and Space: Towards a Lyric Archaeology

Co-authored with Leslie Kurke. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press
,
2019

Kunst und Archäologie der griechischen Welt: Von den Anfängen bis zum Hellenismus

Philipp von Zabern
,
2013

The Emergence of the Classical Style in Greek Sculpture

University of Chicago Press
,
2013

Art & Archaeology of the Greek World: A New History, c. 2500 - c. 150 BCE

First Edition. Thames and Hudson
,
2012

Style and Politics in Athenian Vase Painting: The Craft of Democracy, ca. 530-460 B.C.E.

Cambridge University Press
,
2002

"Statues, Stelai and Turning-Posts in Greece, ca. 565-ca. 465 BCE: The Limits of Iconography.” In Landscape Systems, edited by Jaś Elsner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

,

“Small Wonders: Figurines, Puppets and the Aesthetics of Scale in Archaic and Classical Greece,”  in Figurines, edited by Jaś Elsner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).

,

“Ancient Greek Vessels between Sea, Earth, and Clouds," in Vessels: The Object as Container, edited by Claudia Brittenham, 6-49 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

,

“Introduction” and “Three Types of Invisibility: The Akropolis of Athens.” In Conditions of Visibility, edited by R. Neer, 7-42 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

,

“Introduction” and “Lightweight: Mizoguchi, Ugetsu and the Displacement of Criteria” in “Davidson and His Interlocutors,” edited by D. Lorenzini and R. Neer. Special issue, Critical Inquiry 45 (2019).

,

"L'histoire de l'image (après Vernant)," in Relire Vernant, edited by Stella Georgoudi and François de Polignac, 169-86 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres 2018).

,

“Amber, Oil and Fire: Greek Sculpture beyond Bodies,” in Art History (2018)

,

“Ornament, Incipience and Narrative: Geometric to Classical,”  in Ornament and Figure in Graeco-Roman Art: Rethinking Visual Ontologies in Classical Antiquity, edited by Michael Squire and Nikolaus Dietrich (Berlin: De Gruyter 2018)

,

“Was the Knidia a Statue? Art History and the Terms of Comparison,” in Comparativism in Art History, ed. J. Elsner (New York: Routledge 2017)

,

“Before Realism,” in Art in America (January, 2017)

,

Exhibitions

"Graphikē: Writing/Drawing in the Ancient World,” (with Glenn Most) Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2006

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