Svetlana Alpers

Who is Svetlana Alpers?

Svetlana Leontief Alpers is an American art historian, also an artist and critic. She was a professor of art history at the University of California at Berkeley from 1962 to 1998, where she is now Professor Emerita, and is one of the most influential American art historians of her generation. Her specialty was Dutch Golden Age painting, although she has also written on Tiepolo, Rubens, Breugel, and Velázquez, among others. She is a consultant to both National Public Radio and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and has held many visiting academic appointments around the world.