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Robert L. Herbert Is 2008 Distinguished Scholar
Robert L. Herbert.
To read Nancy J. Troy’s article on Robert L. Herbert, download the November 2007 issue of CAA News.
The honoree of next year’s Distinguished Scholar Session is Robert L. Herbert, the eminent scholar of nineteenth-century French art. Inaugurated in 2001, this Annual Conference session pays tribute to a renowned art historian who has made significant contributions to the field.
At the 2008 conference in Dallas–Fort Worth, Herbert will be joined by the Distinguished Scholar Session’s chair, Nancy J. Troy of the University of Southern California, and a panel of four speakers: Mark Antliff of Duke University, S. Hollis Clayson of Northwestern University, Michael Leja of the University of Pennsylvania, and Cécile Whiting of the University of California, Irvine. The session takes place Thursday, February 21, 2:30–5:00 PM, at the Adam’s Mark Hotel, Dallas Ballroom C, First Floor. Please see the forthcoming November issue of CAA News for Troy’s thoughtful article on Herbert and his accomplishments.
After thirty-four years teaching art history at Yale University, Herbert is now Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus of Humanities at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Born in 1929, he earned his BA at Wesleyan University in 1951 and his PhD from Yale in 1957.
Herbert’s scholarship on nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century art is extensive. Among his many books and exhibition catalogues are: The Art Criticism of John Ruskin (1964), Modern Artists on Art (1964), The Société Anonyme and the Dreier Bequest at Yale University: A Catalog Raisonné (1984), Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society (1988), Seurat: Drawings and Paintings (1988), Monet on the Normandy Coast: Tourism and Painting, 1867–1886 (1994), Nature’s Workshop: Renoir’s Writings on the Decorative Arts (2000), and From Millet to Léger: Essays in Social Art History (2002).
A curator as well as a scholar and teacher, Herbert organized his first exhibition, Barbizon Revisited, in 1962 for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the show traveled to the Toledo Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. The catalogue for this exhibition was also his first book. Herbert’s other survey and monographic exhibitions include: Neo-Impressionism (1968), J. F. Millet (1975–76), Millet’s “The Gleaners” (1978), Léger’s “Le Grand Déjeuner” (1980), Seurat (1991), and Peasants and “Primitivism”: French Prints from Millet to Gauguin (1995–96) for such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, among others. His most recent show was the celebrated Seurat and the Making of “La Grande Jatte” at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004.
The Art Bulletin first published Herbert’s scholarship in 1958, and his most recent article appeared there in September of this year. He has also written for the Burlington Magazine, Art in America, Museum Studies, and numerous edited collections. He contributes frequently to the New York Review of Books, and his own books and catalogues have been well reviewed and received.
Professional accolades have followed Herbert from the beginning of his career—he was a Fulbright fellow in Paris in 1951–52. CAA honored his work twice, presenting him with the Frank Jewitt Mather Award for Distinction in Art and Architectural Criticism in 1963 and the Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award in 1982. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978 and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1993; the French government named him a Chevalier (1976) and later, in 1990, an Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
With his inclusion in the 2008 Distinguished Scholar Session, Herbert joins a list of illustrious past honorees: Linda Nochlin (2007), John Szarkowski (2006), Richard Brilliant (2005), James Cahill (2004), Phyllis Pray Bober (2003), Leo Steinberg (2002), and James Ackerman (2001).
