Claire Farago
- Professor Emerita
Claire Farago taught Early Modern art, theory, and criticism from 1988 until her retirement in 2017 as Professor Emerita. She has published widely in art theory, transcultural studies, museums studies, critical theory, and is a specialist on the writings of Leonardo da Vinci. Her anthology, Reframing the Renaissance: Visual culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450-1650 (1995) was a groundbreaking contribution that opened the field of art history to critical transcultural studies. Her recent publication, The Fabrication of Leonardo da Vinci’s Trattato della Pittura (2018), is the product of a fifteen-year collaboration with an international team of Leonardo scholars.
During her three decades of teaching and service to the Department she held various administrative posts including Director of Graduate Studies for Art History, Assistant Chair for Undergraduate Studies, and Coordinator of Art History. In collaboration with her colleagues, she developed the undergraduate curriculum and established three new graduate degree programs, the BA/MA in Art History, the M.S. in Museum Studies/Art History, and the Ph.D. in Art History. She has held visiting professorships at UCLA, UNC-Chapel Hill, the University of Melbourne, York University, U.K., the University of Zurich, and elsewhere. In fall 2021 she was Ruth and Clarence Kennedy Visiting Professor in Renaissance Studies at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.
Her new book Writing Borderless Histories of Art: Human Exceptionalism and the Climate Crisis, Routledge Press, appearing in June 2025, is the result of six years of intensive study of the roots of the discourse on art and its entanglement with global expansionism, extractive capitalism, and environmental damage. Published alongside is the anthology she co-edited with Susan Lowish and Jens Baumgarten, Transcultural Histories of Art and Artisanal Epistemologies: Knowledge to Be Made, appearing in August 2025. She currently lives in Los Angeles where she is affiliated with CMRS-Early Global Studies Center at UCLA.