Holger A. Klein
Lisa and Bernard Selz Professor of Medieval Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University
(212) 854-3230
hak56@columbia.edu
931 Schermerhorn Hall
Research Interests
Late Antique and Byzantine art and architecture
Cross-cultural exchange
Cult of relics
Material culture
Holger A. Klein was educated in Art History, Early Christian Archaeology, and German Literature at the universities of Freiburg in Breisgau, Munich, London, and Bonn. His research focuses on Late Antique, Early Medieval, and Byzantine art and architecture, more specifically, on the cult of relics, reliquaries, and issues of cultural and artistic exchange.
Professor Klein joined Columbia University as an Assistant Professor in 2000, was promoted to tenured Associate Professor in 2006, and to Professor in 2011. In 2015–16, he held an Alliance Visiting Professorship at the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and taught Columbia undergraduates at Reid Hall. He was named The Lisa and Bernard Selz Professor of Medieval Art History in 2018. At Columbia University, Professor Klein has served as Director of Art Humanities (2003; 2007–09), Director of Graduate Studies (2010–12; 2017–20), Chair of the Department of Art History and Archaeology (2012–15), inaugural Director of the Sakıp Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies (2017–21), and Faculty Director of the Casa Muraro Library and Research Center in Venice.
In addition to his academic work, Professor Klein previously held an appointment as the Robert P. Bergman Curator of Medieval Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art (2004–07) and continued to oversee the reinstallation of the museum's renowned collection of Medieval and Byzantine art until 2010. His work as a curator includes various international loan exhibitions, among them Restoring Byzantium. The Kariye Camii in Istanbul and the Byzantine Institute Restoration (Wallach Art Gallery, 2004; Pera Museum, 2007), Medieval Treasures from The Cleveland Museum of Art (Bayerisches Nationalmuseum/The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2007–08) and Treasures of Heaven. Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe (Cleveland Museum of Art/Walters Art Museum/British Museum, 2010–11) and The Way We Remember Fritz Koenig’s Sphere, the Trauma of 9/11, and the Politics of Memory (Wallach Art Gallery, 2021).
Professor Klein is the recipient of several awards and prizes, including the 50th annual Mark Van Doren Award for Teaching (2011), which honors a Columbia professor's commitment to undergraduate instruction as well as inspiring leadership; the Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award (2012), which recognizes unusual merit as a teacher of undergraduate and graduate students as well as outstanding scholarship; and the Wm. Theodore de Bary Award for Distinguished Service to the Core Curriculum (2014). He was named a Distinguished Research Fellow of Sabancı University in 2020.
Selected Publications
Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe (ed. with Martina Bagnoli, C. Griffith Mann, and James Robinson). Yale University Press, 2010.
Bir Anıt – Iki Anıtsal Kişilik. Theodoros Methokites’den Thomas Whittemore’a. Kariye. From Theodore Metochites to Thomas Whittemore. One Monument – Two Monumental Personalities (ed. with R. G. Ousterhout and B. Pitarakis). Istanbul: Pera Museum, 2007.
Sacred Gifts and Worldly Treasures. Medieval Masterpieces from the Cleveland Museum of Art (ed., with contributions by Stephen Fliegel and Virginia Brilliant). Cleveland: 2007.
Byzanz, der Westen und das wahre Kreuz. Die Geschichte einer Reliquie und ihrer künstlerischen Fassung in Byzanz und im Abendland. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2004.
Restoring Byzantium. The Kariye Camii in Istanbul and the Byzantine Institute Restoration (ed., in collaboration with Robert G. Ousterhout). New York: Wallach Art Gallery, 2004.
