David Summers (born 1941) is the Emeritus

William R. Kenan Jr. William Rand Kenan Jr. (April 30, 1872 – July 28, 1965) was an American chemist, engineer, manufacturer, dairy farmer, and philanthropist. Early life William Rand Kenan Jr. was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, on April 30, 1872., son of Willi ...

Professor of Art Theory and Italian Renaissance Art at the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...

. He holds a B.A. from

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

(1963) and a Ph.D. from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

(1969). He taught at

Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh: ) is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of elite, historically women's colleges in the United St ...

and the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the universit ...

before accepting an appointment to the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Virginia in 1981. In 1984, he was appointed William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of the History of Art and retired in 2015. He was elected to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

in 1996. Summers is generally regarded as an expert on Renaissance art and a notable figure in the field of art historical research. Among his main contributions to art history is the publication '' Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism''. This nearly seven-hundred-page book is the result of twenty years of studies and is an attempt to reformulate the disciplinary approach of art history.James Elkins ''On David Summers' Real Spaces'' in ''Is Art History Global'', Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2007, pp. 41-72. Summers is the older brother of the writer Marilynne Robinson.

Select list of Summers' publications

*''Michelangelo and the Language of Art'', Princeton: Princeton University Press 1981. *''The Judgment of Sense: Renaissance Naturalism and the Rise of Aesthetics'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1987. *'' Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism'', London: Phaidon 2003. *''Vision, Reflection, and Desire in Western Painting'', Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 2007.

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References

American art historians Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences University of Virginia faculty Living people Brown University alumni Yale University alumni Bryn Mawr College faculty 1941 births {{US-art-historian-stub