Christopher S. Wood (born June 7, 1961) is professor in the Department of German at
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
; he is best known as an art historian.
Early life and education
Wood is the son of
Gordon S. Wood
Gordon Stewart Wood (born November 27, 1933) is an American historian and professor at Brown University. He is a recipient of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for History for '' The Radicalism of the American Revolution'' (1992). His book ''The Creation o ...
,
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...
winning historian of the early American republic and University professor emeritus at
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
. His sister, Amy Wood, is a professor of history at
Illinois State University
Illinois State University (ISU) is a public university in Normal, Illinois. Founded in 1857 as Illinois State Normal University, it is the oldest public university in Illinois. The university emphasizes teaching and is recognized as one of th ...
.
Wood was raised in
Barrington, Rhode Island
Barrington is a suburban, residential town in Bristol County, Rhode Island located approximately southeast of Providence. It was founded by Congregationalist separatists from Swansea, Massachusetts and incorporated in 1717.
Barrington was ceded ...
, attending Barrington High School. He earned an
A.B.
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
in history and literature at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, completing an honors thesis on
Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding (22 April 1707 – 8 October 1754) was an English novelist, irony writer, and dramatist known for earthy humour and satire. His comic novel '' Tom Jones'' is still widely appreciated. He and Samuel Richardson are seen as founders ...
in 1983. After a year on a Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst fellowship at the
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...
in
Munich, Germany
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
, he returned to Harvard and in 1992 received a PhD in fine arts. His dissertation, supervised by
Henri Zerner
Henri is an Estonian, Finnish, French, German and Luxembourgish form of the masculine given name Henry.
People with this given name
; French noblemen
:'' See the ' List of rulers named Henry' for Kings of France named Henri.''
* Henri I de Mont ...
, considered the landscape drawings, prints and paintings of
Albrecht Altdorfer
Albrecht Altdorfer (12 February 1538) was a German painter, engraver and architect of the Renaissance working in Regensburg, Bavaria. Along with Lucas Cranach the Elder and Wolf Huber he is regarded to be the main representative of the Danube Sc ...
. From 1989 to 1992, he was a junior fellow in the
Harvard Society of Fellows
The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intell ...
.
Career
From 1992 to 2014, Wood rose, incrementally, from assistant professor to Carnegie Professor in the History of Art at
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
. In 2014, he joined the German studies department at New York University.
Wood has also held visiting appointments at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
(1997);
Vassar College
Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely follo ...
, as Belle Ribicoff Distinguished Visiting Scholar, 2001; and
Hebrew University
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...
,
Jerusalem
Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
(2007).
From 1999 to 2002, he was book review editor of the journal of the
College Art Association
The College Art Association of America (CAA) is the principal organization in the United States for professionals in the visual arts, from students to art historians to emeritus faculty. Founded in 1911, it "promotes these arts and their understa ...
, the ''
Art Bulletin
The College Art Association of America (CAA) is the principal organization in the United States for professionals in the visual arts, from students to art historians to emeritus faculty. Founded in 1911, it "promotes these arts and their understa ...
''. His review of
Hans Belting
Hans Belting (born 7 July 1935 in Andernach, Rhine Province) is a German art historian and theorist of medieval and Renaissance art, as well as contemporary art and image theory. He was born in Andernach, Germany, and studied at the universities ...
's ''Bild-Anthropologie'', in ''Art Bulletin'' 86 (June 2004): 370–73, was selected as one of 38 texts for inclusion in the ''Art Bulletin Centennial Anthology 1911–2011''. In 2019 he published ''A History of Art History'' (Princeton University Press, September 2019).
Research
Based on his dissertation, Wood's first book, ''Albrecht Altdorfer and the Origins of Landscape'' (Reaktion and Chicago, 1993), was a monograph on the sixteenth-century German painter who created the first pure landscape paintings in the European tradition. This book was reissued with a new Afterword in 2014. Wood has published many articles on the art and culture of the German late Middle Ages and Renaissance, including essays on
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer (; ; hu, Ajtósi Adalbert; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer (without an umlaut) or Due ...
and Albrecht Altdorfer; on drawings; on the cult of images and Reformation
iconoclasm
Iconoclasm (from Ancient Greek, Greek: grc, wikt:εἰκών, εἰκών, lit=figure, icon, translit=eikṓn, label=none + grc, wikt:κλάω, κλάω, lit=to break, translit=kláō, label=none)From grc, wikt:εἰκών, εἰκών + wi ...
; on
ex votos; and on early archeological scholarship. He has also written on Italian artists including
Piero della Francesca
Piero della Francesca (, also , ; – 12 October 1492), originally named Piero di Benedetto, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. To contemporaries he was also known as a mathematician and geometer. Nowadays Piero della Francesca i ...
,
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael (; or ; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. List of works by Raphael, His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of ...
, and
Dosso Dossi
Giovanni di Niccolò de Luteri, better known as Dosso Dossi ( 1489–1542), was an Italian Renaissance painter who belonged to the School of Ferrara, painting in a style mainly influenced by Venetian painting, in particular Giorgione and early T ...
.
In 2000 Wood published an anthology of translated writings by Viennese art historians of the early twentieth century, with an introductory essay:
The Vienna School Reader: Politics and Art Historical Method in the 1930s' (ZONE Books). His work on the history of the discipline of art history and its meaning within modernity includes articles on
Alois Riegl
Alois Riegl (14 January 1858, Linz – 17 June 1905, Vienna) was an Austrian art historian, and is considered a member of the Vienna School of Art History. He was one of the major figures in the establishment of art history as a self-sufficient ac ...
,
Josef Strzygowski
Josef Rudolph Thomas Strzygowski (March 7, 1862 – January 2, 1941) was a Polish-Austrian art historian known for his theories promoting influences from the art of the Near East on European art, for example that of Early Christian Armenian arch ...
,
Aby Warburg
Aby Moritz Warburg, better known as Aby Warburg, (June 13, 1866 – October 26, 1929) was a German art historian and cultural theorist who founded the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (Library for Cultural Studies), a private library, ...
,
Erwin Panofsky
Erwin Panofsky (March 30, 1892 in Hannover – March 14, 1968 in Princeton, New Jersey) was a German-Jewish art historian, whose academic career was pursued mostly in the U.S. after the rise of the Nazi regime.
Panofsky's work represents a hig ...
,
Otto Pächt
Otto Pächt (7 September 1902, Vienna - 17 April 1988, Vienna) was an Austrian art historian and one of the representatives of the second wave of the Vienna School of Art History. He mostly wrote on the medieval and Renaissance art of Europe. An ...
,
Ernst Gombrich
Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich (; ; 30 March 1909 – 3 November 2001) was an Austrian-born art historian who, after settling in England in 1936, became a naturalised British citizen in 1947 and spent most of his working life in the United Kin ...
, and
Michael Baxandall
Michael David Kighley Baxandall, FBA (18 August 1933 – 12 August 2008) was a British art historian and a professor emeritus of Art History at the University of California, Berkeley. He taught at the Warburg Institute, University of London, and ...
. He has translated the treatise ''Perspective as Symbolic Form'' by Panofsky.
Another aspect of his research concerns the coordination of art and history. Early archeological studies, archaism, and typology are the main themes of his
Forgery, Replica, Fiction: Temporalities of German Renaissance Art' (Chicago, 2008), which was awarded the Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship.
Anachronic Renaissance', co-authored with Alexander Nagel (ZONE, 2010), has been widely reviewed. The French translation (''Renaissance anachroniste'', Les Presses du Réel) by Françoise Jaouen was awarded the Prix de la traduction of the Salon du livre et de la revue d'art at the Festival de l'histoire de l'art, Fontainebleau, June 2013. Italian (Quodlibet) and Spanish (Akal) translations are in press.
Honors
*Jacob Wendell Scholar, Harvard University (1980)
*John Simon
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 ...
(2002)
*
NEH Rome Prize Fellowship to the
American Academy in Rome
The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill) in Rome.
The academy is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers.
History
In 1893, a group of American architects, ...
(2002–03)
*Ellen Maria Gorrissen Fellow at the
American Academy in Berlin
The American Academy in Berlin is a private, independent, nonpartisan research and cultural institution in Berlin dedicated to sustaining and enhancing the long-term intellectual, cultural, and political ties between the United States and Germany ...
(2004)
*Member, School for Historical Studies of the
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...
, Princeton (2011)
*Senior Fellow,
Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, Vienna (2012)
*Member,
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
(elected 2016)
External links
NYU departmental websitePersonal website
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wood, Christopher
Harvard College alumni
Yale University faculty
New York University faculty
1961 births
Living people
People from Barrington, Rhode Island
American art historians
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni