Alexander nemerov biography

A distinguished scholar of American culture, Alexander Nemerov explores our connection to the past and the power of the humanities to shape our lives. Through his empathetic, intuitive research and close readings of history, philosophy, and poetry, Nemerov reveals art as a source of emotional truth and considers its ethical demands upon us in our moment. Revered for his breadth of scholarship and celebrated for his eloquent public speaking, Nemerov inspires audiences with his belief in the affirming and transfiguring force of art.

An instinctive, nuanced author, Nemerov’s most recent book is The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s presenting tales of a visionär experience in the last years of America as a heavily forested land. His conjuring of a lost world of shade and sun has been praised by Annie Proulx ("deeply beautiful”, “astonishingly tender”, “one of the richest books ever to komma my way") and Edmund dem Waal (“moving and shocking and beauti

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Alexander Nemerov is the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford University. A scholar of American art, he writes about the presence of art, the recollection of the past, and the importance of the humanities in our lives today. His many books include The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s, (Princeton University Press, 2023), Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York, (Penguin, 2022), Soulmaker: The Times of Lewis Hine (Princeton University Press, 2016), Silent Dialogues: Diane Arbus and Howard Nemerov (Fraenkel Gallery, 2015), Wartime Kiss: Visions of the Moment in the 1940s (Princeton University Press, 2013), Acting in the Night: Macbeth and the Places of the Civil War (University of California Press, 2010), Icons of Grief: Val Lewton’s Home Front Pictures (University of California Press, 2005), The Body of Raphaelle Peale: Still Life and Selfhood, 1812–1824 (University of California Press, 2

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Alexander Nemerov: Stanford’s art history preacher

How does a bulldog, Yale chap, son of a poet, and an arts man, nephew of the late Diane Arbus from Vermont and St. Louis — Rachmaninoff and heavy metal lover — grow up to be our hero and a scholar?

Most of Stanford knows the name now — Alexander Nemerov. He is said not to teach art, but to preach it; he does not deliver lectures, but sermons. Taking on a semi-mythic register for his idiosyncratic lectures, Alexander Nemerov is one of Stanford’s most beloved, confounding and discussed professors.

But this is not his goal. Fame or not fame, the name of his game is art history.

“Teaching is totally humbling,” Professor Nemerov tells me after a long Friday of work. “At least teaching the way I teach, because you’re just putting yourself out there. I like the challenge of that, and I believe in the passion of it.”

Before landing his current position as Chair of Stanford’s Art and Art History