Benjamin H. D. Buchloh

Benjamin Buchloh ( born November 13, 1941 in Cologne ) is a German art historian, writer and curator. He teaches art history at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Life and work

Benjamin H. D. (Heinz Dieter ) Buchloh spent his childhood in Switzerland and returned in 1946 back to Cologne. As a young man he moved to Berlin and studied at the Free University of German literature. He was from 1968 active in the student movement in 1969 he received his doctorate to the Dr. phil. He was in 1972 editor of the last two editions of the appearing 1968-1975 avant-garde magazine Interfunktionen. In 1976, he, as successor by Kasper König, visiting professor at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax and publisher of the Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design was. In 1978, he taught for a short time at the Dusseldorf Art Academy.

From 1989 to 1994, Buchloh associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and next 1991-1993 Director for critical and curatorial studies at the Whitney Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Since 1994 was Buchloh professor of art from the 20th century, as well as criticism and critical theory at Barnard College, New York.

He was appointed to the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of Modern Art at Harvard University in 2005. In 2007 he received the first ever for an outstanding art historian Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. In 2009 he was a Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.

Buchloh is the author of several monographs on contemporary artists, including Gerhard Richter, Marcel Broodthaers, Carl Andre and Dan Graham. His work on the Pop Art artist Andy Warhol is considered fundamental. In his writings Buchloh is concerned primarily with the relationship between the historical avant-gardes of the twentieth century and the so-called neo- avant-garde movements of the postwar era. He is regarded as an agent of American and European art production of the sixties to the present and examines the interaction transatlantic artistic practices during this period.

Works (selection)

• Gerhard Richter. Eight Grey. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern -Ruit 2002, ISBN 978-3-7757-1274-3 ( catalog for exhibition at the Deutsche Guggenheim Museum, Berlin 11 October 2002 to 5 January 2003).
• Neo - Avantgarde and Culture Industry. Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975. 2nd edition MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.. 2003, ISBN 978-0-26252347-9 ( October Books).