Barbara J. Novak (born 1929) is an American art historian. She was the Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor of Art History at Barnard College from 1958 to 1998.

Biography

Novak was born in New York City in 1929. She grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens and took art courses with Belle Icahn, mother of financier Carl Icahn. She also studied at the

Art Students League of New York The Art Students League of New York is an art school at 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may stu ...

and

Parsons School of Design Parsons School of Design, known colloquially as Parsons, is a private art and design college located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhatt ...

. Novak graduated from Barnard College in 1950 and attended

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

for graduate work. She was trained under

Rubens Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...

and

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...

scholar

Julius S. Held Julius Samuel Held (1905–2002) was an art historian, collector, and expert on Dutch painters Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Rembrandt. He published several monographs and was a professor of art history at Barnard College, Columbi ...

at Barnard and under Jakob Rosenberg at Radcliffe. She received a Fulbright fellowship in 1953 to pursue her dissertation on the Hudson River School artists Thomas Cole and

Asher Durand Asher Brown Durand (August 21, 1796, – September 17, 1886) was an American painter of the Hudson River School. Early life Durand was born in, and eventually died in, Maplewood, New Jersey (then called Jefferson Village). He was the eighth ...

. Novak joined the Barnard College faculty in 1958. Novak published ''American Painting of the Nineteenth Century: Realism, Idealism and the American Experience'' in 1969. Her second book, ''Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875'', was described as "the most important contribution to the understanding of nineteenth-century American art that has been written in our generation" by John I. H. Baur of the Whitney Museum of American Art and was chosen as one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the '' New York Times''. The book was also the National Book Award for Nonfiction finalist in 1982. Her most recent book ''Voyages of The Self: Pairs, Parallels, and Patterns in American Art and Literature'' was included in the Oxford University Press trilogy ''American Painting of the Nineteenth Century, Nature and Culture.'' Novak received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 1974.

Personal life

Novak married the Irish art critic Brian O'Doherty in 1960.

References

1929 births {{DEFAULTSORT:Novak, Barbara Barnard College faculty Columbia University faculty Barnard College alumni Radcliffe College alumni Living people American women historians American art historians Women art historians 20th-century American academics 21st-century American academics American women academics