Esther Pasztory is a professor emerita of

Pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...

art history at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. From 1997 to her retirement in 2013 she held the Lisa and Bernard Selz Chair in Art History and Archaeology.https://arthistory.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/faculty/pdfs/pasztory/Pasztory-CV.pdf Among her many publications are the first art historical manuscripts on

Teotihuacan Teotihuacan (Spanish language, Spanish: ''Teotihuacán'') (; ) is an ancient Mesoamerican city located in a sub-valley of the Valley of Mexico, which is located in the State of Mexico, northeast of modern-day Mexico City. Teotihuacan is ...

and the

Aztecs The Aztecs () were a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different Indigenous peoples of Mexico, ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those g ...

. She has been the recipient of 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 ...

(1987–88) and a senior fellow of the board of

Dumbarton Oaks Dumbarton Oaks, formally the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, is a historic estate in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It was the residence and garden of wealthy U.S. diplomat Robert Woods Bliss and his wife, M ...

Biography and education

Pasztory was born in Hungary and immigrated to the United States in 1956 after the anti-Communist revolutions. She was initially educated at

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 ...

but later transferred to

Barnard College Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...

where she received her B.A. in art history in 1965. She remained at Columbia University and received her Ph.D. from the institution in 1971 for a dissertation entitled "The Murals of Tepantitla, Teotihuacan". Her research into the

Great Goddess Great Goddess is the concept of an almighty goddess or mother goddess, or a matriarchal religion. Apart from various specific figures called this from various cultures, the Great Goddess hypothesis, is a postulated fertility goddess supposed to h ...

of Teotihuacan has been influential and provided the basis for many later art historical studies.

Publications

* 1974, ''The iconography of the Teotihuacan Tlaloc '' * 1978, ''Middle Classic Mesoamerica, A.D. 400-700 '' * 1983, ''Aztec art '' * 1997, ''Teotihuacan : an experiment in living'' * 1998, ''Pre-Columbian art '' * 2005, ''Thinking with things : toward a new vision of art '' * 2010, ''Jean-Frédéric Waldeck : artist of exotic Mexico '' * 2017, ''Visual Culture of the Ancient Americas : Contemporary Perspectives ''

References

External links

Esther Pasztory Papers
a
the Newberry Library
American art historians Women art historians Columbia University faculty Living people American women historians Hungarian emigrants to the United States Barnard College alumni Columbia University alumni Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women {{US-art-historian-stub