Claire Holt (August 23, 1901 - May 29, 1970) was a Russian Empire-born American journalist, anthropologist, and art historian specializing in the arts of Indonesia.

Early life

Born to an upper-middle class

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family as Claire Bagg in Riga,

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

in 1901, Holt married Bernard Hopfenberg in 1920 and emigrated from the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

shortly thereafter with her husband. In 1921, they moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, where she received instruction at the

Brooklyn Law School Brooklyn Law School (BLS) is a private law school in New York City. Founded in 1901, it has approximately 1,100 students. Brooklyn Law School's faculty includes 60 full-time faculty, 15 emeriti faculty, and a number of adjunct faculty. Brookly ...

and

Columbia University School of Journalism The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is located in Pulitzer Hall on the university's Morningside Heights campus in New York City. Founded in 1912 by Joseph Pulitzer, Columbia Journalism School is one of the oldest journalism sc ...

. During this time, she also studied sculpture with

Alexander Archipenko Alexander Porfyrovych Archipenko (also referred to as Olexandr, Oleksandr, or Aleksandr; uk, Олександр Порфирович Архипенко, Romanized: Olexandr Porfyrovych Arkhypenko; February 25, 1964) was a Ukrainian and American ...

Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique in ...

. Her husband died in 1928. From 1928 to 1930 she was employed as a reporter for ''The New York World'', for which she wrote dance reviews under the pen name Claire Holt, which later became her legal name. In 1930, she traveled to Indonesia where she studied and documented Indonesian dance through film and photography with Rolf de Mare, a Swedish dance archivist and art collector. She returned to the US upon the start of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

and served as a research assistant to anthropologist

Margaret Mead Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s. She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard C ...

at the

Museum of Natural History A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more ...

Career

Holt joined the staff of Cornell University in 1957 as a research associate. Her most important work of scholarship was ''Art in Indonesia: Continuities and Change'' (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), an interdisciplinary introduction to Hindu and Buddhist monuments of Indonesia and the heritage of Indian influence in the performance arts. In 1965, she helped found th
Cornell Modern Indonesia Project
with faculty in the

Cornell Southeast Asia Program The Southeast Asia Program (SEAP) was founded in 1950 to promote the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge about countries, cultures and languages of the region. It is an interdisciplinary program of Cornell University that focuses on the dev ...

, a compilation of analyses of contemporary Indonesia and translations of documents regarding Indonesia's socio-political evolution in the 20th century made available for scholarship. Her approach to art history incorporated history and politics into the analysis of sculpture, dance, and traditional and modern painting. She was still active in scholarship at the time of her death in 1970.

References

External links

Guide to the Claire Holt Papers, ca. 1928-1970, New York Public Library

Claire Holt Papers, Cornell University Library Digital Collection

* ttp://cmip.library.cornell.edu/ Cornell Modern Indonesia Project* "A Radiant Love for Indonesian Ar

Sitting at the Feet of Gurus
{{DEFAULTSORT:Holt, Claire Cornell University people American art historians Women art historians Dance historians Historians of Southeast Asia 1901 births 1970 deaths Brooklyn Law School alumni Soviet emigrants to the United States