Biography
Richard Neer is Barbara E. and Richard J. Franke Distinguished Service Professor in Art History, Cinema & Media Studies and the College and Director of the Franke Institute for the Humanities at the University of Chicago, where he is also an affiliate of the departments of Classics and Romance Languages & Literatures. He works at the intersection of aesthetics and the history of art across Classical archaeology, early modern French painting and mid-twentieth century cinema, with a special interest in theories of style. His Ph.D. is from the University of California at Berkeley (History of Art, 1998), his A.B. from Harvard College (Fine Arts, 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. From 2010 to 2018 he was the Executive Editor of Critical Inquiry, where he continues to serve as co-editor. In 2022 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Publications include The Emergence of the Classical Style in Greek Sculpture (2010), named a “Best Book” of 2010 in Artforum; Pindar, Song, and Space: Towards a Lyric Archaeology (2019), co-authored with Leslie Kurke, recipient of the 2019 PROSE Award for best book in Classical Studies from the Association of American Publishers; and, most recently, Painting as a Way of Life: Philosophy and Practice in French Art, 1620–1660 (2025).
