The University of Liège will confer an honorary degree to Ethan Matt Kavaler, Director of the CRRS, next week. To read the original post (in French), click here.
Ethan Matt Kavaler, a professor at the University of Toronto, is one of the most influential art historians of our time. Born in Bern in 1958, he studied at Harvard and Columbia University and obtained his doctoral degree from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. Since 1989, he has taught at the University of Toronto where he also serves as the Director of the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at Victoria University. Specializing in European art of the 16th century, not only has he renewed ways of examining the most well-known artistic creations of this period, but also promoted the rediscoveries of countless lesser-known treasures.
One of his most noteworthy publications in his illustrious and prolific career is Pieter Bruegel, Parables of Order and Enterprise (Cambridge University Press, 1999). Also of note have been his series of works surrounding what he has termed the “Renaissance Gothic.” This concept, which he articulated in the book of the same name, Renaissance Gothic, Architecture and the Arts in Northern Europe 1470-1540 (Yale University Press, 2012) invited readers to reconsider both the geography and history of sixteenth century art while liberating the traditional ideas inherited from Italian historiography. In doing so, Kavaler irrevocably altered our approach to European cultural history. Additionally, he expressed such notions in the American magazine The Art Bulletin in 2007, which had a profound impact on international research.
A fixture at art history conferences and a member of the Royal Academy of Archaeology of Belgium, Kavaler has also forged significant connections with the faculty and researchers at the University of Liège with whom he has regularly collaborated for many years, including as an accessible and attentive interlocutor. He has also played a vital role in redeploying the discipline plagued by disfavour for many decades. His works are manifestos of a new approach to art history that is bolstered and livened by a return to its methodological roots.
