Suzanne P. Blier
Allen Whitehill Clowes Professor of Fine Art and African and African American Studies
Address:
Sackler Museum
Harvard University
485 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617.495.2377
Fax: 617.495.1769
Email:
blier@fas.
Courses | Biography | Recent Publications | Curriculum Vitae
Courses
African and African American Studies 169: Visualizing Africa - New Course (Fall 2007)
Biography
Professor Blier is the Editor-in-Chief of an electronic media project at Harvard called Baobab: Visual Sources in African Visual Culture, which is an interactive database of images on African art and material culture. She has done extensive research in the West African countries of Benin and Togo. She is the recipient of numerous scholarly awards, including those from the John S. Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, the Fulbright-Hays Award, the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, and the Seaver Institute. Professor Blier has been active in bringing African art into the mainstream of art historical study and has also curated a number of exhibitions on African art.
In addition to numerous articles, her books include: Art of the Senses: African Masterpieces from the William and Bertha Teel Collection (2004), which she edited; Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa (2003), co-authored with James Morris; and A History of Art in Africa (2001), co-authored with Monica Blackmun Visona, Robin Poynor, Herbert M. Cole, Michael D. Harris, and Rowland Abiodun. Additional books include the forthcoming Imaging African Amazons: The Art of Dahomey Women Warriors; African Royal Art: The Majesty of Form (Calmann & King, 1998); African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power (University of Chicago Press, 1995), which received the Charles Rufus Morey Award for distinguished book in art history written in 1996; and The Anatomy of Architecture: Ontology and Metaphor in Batammaliba Architectural Expression (Cambridge University Press, 1987), which was awarded the Arnold Rubin Outstanding Publication Award in African Art scholarship.
Professor Blier holds a Ph.D. in art history and archaeology from Columbia University, where she was also a professor, and a B.A. from the University of Vermont. She has also held teaching positions at Northwestern University and Vassar College.
Recent Publications
Art of the Senses: African Masterpieces from the William and Bertha Teel Collection, (ed.) (Museum of Fine Arts Publications, 2004)
Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa, James Morris and Suzanne Preston Blier (Princeton Architectural Press, 2003)
A History of Art in Africa, Monica Blackmun Visona, Robin Poynor, Herbert M. Cole, Michael D. Harris, Rowland Abiodun, and Suzanne Preston Blier (Prentice Hall, 2001)