Linda Nochlin

Art historian, born in New York City, New York, USA. She studied at Vassar (1951 BA), Columbia University (MA 1952), and New York University (NYU) (1963 PhD). She taught art at Vassar (1952–80), the City University of New York (1980–90), Yale (1990), and at NYU's Institute of Fine Arts (1992). A specialist in 19th-c and 20th-c painting and sculpture, she was one of the first scholars to define feminist issues in 19th-c painting.

Professor and art historian Linda Nochlin is a leader in feminist art history studies. In 1971, the magazine ArtNews published an essay whose title posed a question that would spearhead an entirely new branch of art history. Nochlin examined why male artists such as Michelangelo have been revered for centuries as an artistic genius while female artists such as Sofonisba Anguissola, Artemisia Gentileschi, Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, Rosa Bonheur, Angelica Kauffman, Vanessa Bell, Marie Bashkirtseff, Cecilia Beaux, Hannah Höch, Hilma af Klint, Suzanne Valadon, Harriet Backer, and Gwen John (to name a very few) have been completely passed over.

Nochlin has also been involved in publishing other essays and books including Representing Women; Women, Art, and Power: And Other Essays; The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society;

Nochlin received her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University in 1963. Besides feminist art history, she is best known for her work on Realism and specifically on Courbet.

After working in the art history departments at Yale University and the City College of New York (with Rosalind Krauss), Nochlin then took a position at the Institute of Fine Arts, where she continues to teach and inspire today.