Keith Christiansen (art historian)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Keith Christiansen (born 1947 in

Seattle, Washington) is an American art historian, curator, and author.[1] He is the chairman of the department of European paintings at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art.[2]

Education

Christiansen did his undergraduate studies at the

University of California Los Angeles where he received his Masters of the Arts in 1971. He next received his PhD in art history from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts
in 1977.

Career

Christiansen has been with the Metropolitan Museum since right after his Graduate Studies finished in 1977 and became the

Poussin and Nature (2008), and Michelangelo
's First Painting (2009).

2020 controversy

In June 2020 Christiansen ignited a bit of a firestorm including within the ranks of Metropolitan Museum's own staff when he published an Instagram post decrying the destruction of monuments by "zombies". The post was published on Juneteenth and considered by some to be a commentary on certain "Black Lives Matter" protestors. Therein a letter was sent to the museum's leadership by staff members asking for recognition of "what we see as the expression of a deeply rooted logic of white supremacy and culture of systemic racism at our institution.” A day before the staff letter was sent Christiansen apologized to the European paintings department calling his Instagram post "not only not appropriate and misguided in its judgment but simply wrong.”

Christiansen had uploaded a picture of a

archaeologist Alexandre Lenoir (1769–1831) of his efforts to try to save monuments during the French Revolution and had the caption "Alexandre Lenoir battling the revolutionary zealots bent on destroying the royal tombs in Saint Denis. How many great works of art have been lost to the desire to rid ourselves of a past of which we don’t approve"...[2]

Publications

Christiansen is the co-author with Judith Makn of Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi (2001) from the Met Publications.[4]

Christiansen edited From Filippo Lippi to Piero della Francesca: Fra Carnevale and the Making of a Renaissance Master (Met publications 2005) as well as contributing an essay to the volume.[5]

He is the co-curator with Carlo Falciani of the 2021 exhibition The Medici Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570 at the Metropolitan Museum as well as th co-editor (again with Falciani) of the corresponding book from Yale University Press.[6]

He was the co-editor with Maryan W. Ainsworth of From Van Eyck to Bruegel: Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

References

  1. ^ "Christiansen, Keith 1947- | Encyclopedia.com".
  2. ^ a b Pogrebin, Robin (June 24, 2020). "Upheaval Over Race Reaches Met Museum After Curator's Instagram Post". The New York Times.
  3. ^ "Keith Christiansen to Chair European Paintings Department at Metropolitan Museum". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 31 January 2022.
  4. ^ "Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi | MetPublications | the Metropolitan Museum of Art".
  5. ^ "From Filippo Lippi to Piero della Francesca: Fra Carnevale and the Making of a Renaissance Master | MetPublications | the Metropolitan Museum of Art".
  6. ^ "Medici | Yale University Press". yalebooks.yale.edu.

External links