Speakers' Biographies

Oleg Grabar, began his teaching career in 1954, at the University of Michigan. He taught at Harvard University from 1968 to 1990 and was named Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture when that chair was established at Harvard in 1980. In 1990, he joined the Institute for Advanced Study. A native of Strasbourg, France, he attended the University of Paris, receiving certificates de licence in ancient, medieval, and modern history in 1948 and 1950. He earned his B.A. (1950) from Harvard College in medieval history and his M.A. (1953) and Ph.D. in Oriental Languages (1955) from Princeton University. He is the author of eighteen books and more than 140 articles. He has been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Academy, the Institute for the Study of the Middle and Far East, the German Archaeological Institute, and the National Gallery of Art, where he delivered the prestigious Mellon Lectures. He is a recipient of the Levi Della Vida award, given to honor distinguished scholarship in the field of Islamic Studies. In April 2001, he received the Charles Lang Freer Medal from the Smithsonian Institution “for distinguished contributions to the knowledge and understanding of Oriental civilization as reflected in the arts.”

Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Aleksandr Naymark began his education in Moscow, where his parents, a writer and a journalist, moved in 1966. At the age of fourteen, Naymark participated in his first archaeological expedition in Central Asia, the first of over 30 historical excavations in which he participated during the subsequent 17 seasons. Meanwhile, Naymark entered the archaeological department at Tashkent University in 1976, transferred to the Moscow University in 1977, and graduated from the latter in 1982 with the equivalent of two separate degrees in Archaeology and in the Methodology of the Analysis of Historical Sources. In 1983, he was employed by the Moscow Museum of Oriental Art with the purpose of the organization of museum’s archaeological work in Central Asia. He also served as the museum’s curator of Central Asian pre-Islamic art and coins. In 1991 Naymark emigrated to the United States, and in 1992, he enrolled in the Ph.D. program of the Central Eurasian Studies Department at Indiana University, where he studied and taught for five years. In 1997 he received a Horstmann Fellowship and until the fall of 1999 was affiliated with the Eurasian Abteilung of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. He earned his Ph.D. in 2001, a joint degree in Art History and Central Eurasian Studies. His dissertation was “Sogdiana, its Christians and Byzantium: A Study of Artistic and Cultural Connections in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages.” Presently, Naymark is an Assistant Professor at Hofstra University, where he is responsible for the Eastern curriculum in art history and involved in Central Asian subjects in the Middle Eastern and Central Asian Program.

Wayne Andersen is Emeritus Professor, Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He holds a BA degree from the University of California, Berkeley, with joint majors in biology, anthropology, and art history. He took his MA and PhD from Columbia University in art history and archeology. He taught at MIT for twenty years, with visiting professorships as Yale and Harvard. His fellowships include: William Bayard Cutting Fellow in Columbia University, Ford Foundation Fellow, Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, and Belgian-American Fellow. He is a member of the New York Academy of Science. His honors include an honorary MFA from the Boston Art Institute, a medal awarded by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for his design contribution to the King Khaled International Airport, and a medal for "perennial wisdom" awarded by the The Monuments Conservancy. Concurrent with teaching at MIT, he was the art and design consultant to the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the Federal Reserve Bank, AT&T, IBM, Wells Fargo Bank, Seafirst Bank, and Standard Oil of California. In 1974, he founded the firm, Vesti Design International, with offices in Boston and Geneva, and was responsible for many large-scale projects in Saudi Arabia, France, and the United States that involved craftspersons from many countries. He is the author of several books, and he lectures internationally. His recent publications include Freud, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Vulcan's Tail (London and New York: Other Press, 2001), Picasso's Brothel: The Demoiselles d'Avignon (New York: Other Press, 2002), and The Ara Pacis of Augustus and Mussolini (Geneva and Boston: Editions Fabriart, 2003).

Joseph Masheck, Professor of Art History, Hofstra University. Born in Manhattan; Holy Cross High School (Flushing), Columbia University (varsity letter in lightweight crew); M. Litt. (aesthetics), Dublin Ph. D., Columbia; Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Doctoral dissertation in art history at Columbia on “Irish Church-Building Between the Tragedy of Limerick and the Great Famine,” part of which developed into long essay on Greek Revival as progressive-nationalist in his Building-Art: Modern Architecture Under Cultural Construction (Cambridge University Press, 1993). Long experience as modernist critic with three years as editor-in-chief of a major art magazine; ongoing series of lectures and essays on the Moravian-Czech-“Austrian” modernist architect Adolf Loos, including local vs. universal aspects of “vernacular” form, idealist classicism, “functionalist” anti-formalism, etc.; most recently, an article about the impress on the young Loos of the new American “imperial” culture of the turn of the nineteenth century, in Kosmas: Czechoslovak and Central European Journal (Fall 2002).

Marjorie Welish is an art critic currently teaching at Brown University, in Providence, and Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn—at the latter examining art criticism as a cultural institution. Author of Signifying Art: Essays on Art After 1960 (Cambridge University Press, 1999), she has written criticism for journals of cultural theory, notably: Annals of Scholarship, Partisan Review and Textual Practice (London). A recent catalogue essay, “Masked Site” Then . . . Now,” for a retrospective exhibition of the emigre American artist Peter Downsbrough, at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, in June 2003, reviews aesthetics of ‘site’ through the changing social context of 1970s environmental concerns and recent ‘nomadic’ discourse. Of the Diagram: The Work of Marjorie Welish, a volume of papers given at a conference on her own art and poetry at the University of Pennsylvania last year, is in production.

Guy Rogers teaches Ancient History and Classics at Wellesley College, where he is a full professor. He has recently taught courses on Alexander the Great, Slavery in the Greco-Roman World, and Paganism and Christianity in the Roman World. He received his B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania, he spent a year at University College London, and earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at Princeton University. His research interests include the cult of Artemis at Ephesus and the career of Alexander the Great. He is the author or editor of three books and numerous articles.

Nancy Thompson is an Assistant Museum Educator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She received her B.A. from Oberlin College and earned a Juris Doctor degree at Yale University. After several years of law practice, she entered the art history program at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in Classical Art and Archaeology, with a specialization in Roman portrait sculpture. While working at the Museum, she has also taught courses at Columbia University.

Wayne R. Dynes completed his Ph.D. at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, with his dissertation on “The Illuminations of the Stavelot Bible” (1969, later published by Garland). He is author of Palaces of Europe, and co-author of Hieronymous Bosch and the Canticle of Isaiah. Author of many scholarly articles and reviews, he has edited three scholarly periodicals and two major reference books. For the last quarter of a century, Dynes has been Professor of Art History, Hunter College, City University of New York. He is the proud recipient of the Perennial Wisdom Award.

Ian Tattersall is currently Curator in the Department of Anthropology of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Born in England and raised in East Africa, he has carried out fieldwork in countries as diverse as Madagascar, Vietnam, Surinam, Yemen and Mauritius. Trained in archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge, and in geology and vertebrate paleontology at Yale, Tattersall has concentrated his research over the past quarter-century in two main areas, in both of which he is an acknowledged leader: the analysis of the human fossil record, and the study of the ecology and systematics of the lemurs of Madagascar. Tattersall is also a prominent interpreter of human paleontology to the public, with several recent trade books to his credit, among them Extinct Humans (with Jeffrey Schwartz; Westview Press, 2000), Becoming Human: Evolution and Human Uniqueness (Harcourt Brace, 1998) and The Last Neanderthal: The Rise, Success and Mysterious Extinction of Our Closest Human Relatives (Westview Press, Revised ed., 1999) as well as several articles in Scientific American and the co-editorship of the definitive Encyclopedia of Human Evolution and Prehistory. He lectures widely, and, as curator, has also been responsible for several major exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History, including Ancestors: Four Million Years of Humanity (1984); Dark Caves, Bright Visions: Life In Ice Age Europe

James Beck has been teaching at Columbia University since 1963, following short stays at the University of Alabama and Arizona State University. In addition to his training as an art historian (Ph.D. 1963), Beck studied studio art in Italy and at New York University. He was a fellow at Villa I Tatti in Florence (Harvard) as well as Visiting Professor there. His books include monographs on Jacopo della Quercia, Raphael, Michelangelo, and a book on Masaccio is in press. His current research deals with Leonardo da Vinci, whose life will be examined in terms of the fabric of his personal world view. Beck is also the founder and president of ArtWatch International.

Mary Fetchet is Cochair of Voices of September 11th, a 9/11 family advocacy group that she cofounded after her 24-year-old son, Brad, died in the World Trade Center attacks. Her organization provides information to families, advocated for respectful recovery efforts and solutions to the family notification process and a proper memorial at the World Trade Center site. She campaigned for passage of congressional legislation to establish a 9/11 Independent Commission. Ms. Fetchet is a member of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) Family Advisory Board, the Campaign for Skyscraper Safety, and a board member of the Coalition of 9/11 Family Groups. A graduate of Columbia University with a Masters Degree in Social Work, she worked as a clinical social worker at Bridges, an outpatient mental health clinic in Milford, Connecticut. As part of an interdisciplinary team with a diverse adult population, she specialized in anxiety disorders and eating disorders. A resident of New Canaan, Connecticut, she resides with her husband Frank and two surviving sons, Chris, 15, and Wes, 22.

Donald M. Reynolds, founder and director of The Monuments Conservancy, is an art historian and the author of numerous books, articles, and reviews on American art and architecture, which include: Masters of American Sculpture, from the American Renaissance to the Millennium (New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1994), “Remove Not the Ancient Landmark”: Public Monuments and Moral Values, ed., (New York: Gordon and Breach Publishers, 1996), Monuments and Masterpieces: Histories and Views of Public Sculpture in New York City, rev. ed. (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997; original edition, Macmillan, 1988), The Architecture of New York City, rev ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1994; original edition, Macmillan, 1984). He teaches at Columbia University in New York City, where he earned his doctorate in art history (1974), and is the founder of The Samuel Dorsky Symposium on Public Monuments (1991), an annual tribute to the renowned art historian, Rudolf Wittkower , whose lectures on the interrelationship between the East and the West, from ancient to modern times, he compiled and edited in: The Impact of Non-European Civilizations on the Art of the West (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), The Writings of Rudolf Wittkower: A Bibliography (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1989). He was consultant to the Kemper Foundation for The Corps of Discovery, the monument to Lewis and Clark in Kansas City, Missouri, unveiled in 2000, and for the National Black Catholic Congress, he designed the sculpture program of Our Mother of Africa Chapel in The National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, D. C., 2001.