Barbara J. Novak (born 1929) is an American art historian. She was the Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor of Art History at

Barnard College Barnard College is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college affiliated with Columbia University in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a grou ...

from 1958 to 1998.

Biography

Novak was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

in 1929. She grew up in

Far Rockaway, Queens Far Rockaway is a neighborhood on the eastern part of the Rockaway peninsula in the New York City borough of Queens. It is the easternmost section of the Rockaways. The neighborhood extends from Beach 32nd Street east to the Nassau County li ...

and took art courses with Belle Icahn, mother of financier

Carl Icahn Carl Celian Icahn (; born February 16, 1936) is an American businessman and investor. He is the founder and controlling shareholder of Icahn Enterprises, a public company and diversified conglomerate holding company based in Sunny Isles Beach, ...

. She also studied at the

Art Students League of New York The Art Students League of New York is an art school in the American Fine Arts Society in Manhattan, New York City. The Arts Students League is known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may study f ...

and

Parsons School of Design The Parsons School of Design is a private art and design college under The New School located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhattan art ...

. Novak graduated from

in 1950 and attended

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that was founded in 1879. In 1999, it was fully incorporated into Harvard Colle ...

for graduate work. She was trained under

Rubens Sir Peter Paul Rubens ( ; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat. He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens' highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of clas ...

and

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (; ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), mononymously known as Rembrandt was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and Drawing, draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in ...

scholar

Julius S. Held Julius Samuel Held (1905–2002) was an art historian, collector, and expert on Dutch painters Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Rembrandt. He published several monographs and was a professor of art history at Barnard College, Columbia ...

at Barnard and under

Jakob Rosenberg Jakob Rosenberg (September 5, 1893 – April 7, 1980) was an art historian, museum curator, and educator who is noted particularly for published work on Rembrandt. He was active in Germany until his 1937 emigration to the United States, where he ...

at Radcliffe. She received a

Fulbright fellowship The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people o ...

in 1953 to pursue her dissertation on the

Hudson River School The Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. Early on, the paintings typically depicted the Hudson River Valley and the sur ...

artists

Thomas Cole Thomas Cole (February 1, 1801 – February 11, 1848) was an English-born American artist and the founder of the Hudson River School art movement. Cole is widely regarded as the first significant American landscape painter. He was known for hi ...

and

Asher Durand Asher Brown Durand (August 21, 1796 – September 17, 1886) was an American engraver and painter of the Hudson River School. Early life Durand was born in, and eventually died in, Maplewood, New Jersey (then called Jefferson Village). He ...

. Novak joined the Barnard College faculty in 1958. Novak published ''American Painting of the Nineteenth Century: Realism, Idealism and the American Experience'' in 1969. Her second book, ''Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875'', was described as "the most important contribution to the understanding of nineteenth-century American art that has been written in our generation" by John I. H. Baur of the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

and was chosen as one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

''. The book was also the

National Book Award for Nonfiction The National Book Award for Nonfiction is one of five US annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by US citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers". The panelists a ...

finalist in 1982. Her most recent book ''Voyages of The Self: Pairs, Parallels, and Patterns in American Art and Literature'' was included in the

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

trilogy ''American Painting of the Nineteenth Century, Nature and Culture.'' Novak received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

in 1974.

Personal life

Novak married the Irish art critic

Brian O'Doherty Brian O'Doherty (4 May 1928 – 7 November 2022) was an Irish-American art critic, writer, visual artist, and academic. He lived in New York City for over 50 years, serving as an art critic for ''The New York Times'' and NBC, as well as an edito ...

in 1960.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Novak, Barbara 1929 births Barnard College faculty Columbia University faculty Barnard College alumni Radcliffe College alumni Living people American art historians American women art historians 20th-century American academics 21st-century American academics American women academics