April 11, 2012
2012 Lindback Awards: Non-Health Schools Health Schools Provost's Awards
Larry Silver, James and Nan Wagner Farquhar Professor of the History of Art in the School of Arts & Sciences, has taught at Penn since 1997. “Teaching is always a learning opportunity for Larry,” writes a colleague, “and this learning is never only about art; it is always also about the people he’s teaching.” One of the world’s most eminent historians of Northern European Renaissance art and former president of the College Art Association, he nevertheless “demonstrates a genuine desire to learn from his students as much as he teaches them.” His “door is literally always open,” and he has mentored generations of students, long after graduation from Penn, who are sometimes researching areas quite distinct from his own. “Because he is so knowledgeable,” reports a student who worked with him on a topic far removed from his specialty, “there is rarely—if ever—a subject he will not be able to advise his students on.” He “believes in the power of education to transform an individual, a field and even the world,” writes an admiring colleague, “teaching not only the works of art that are his main subject but also what it means to be a human being engaged with the visual and with the worlds that it represents.” Along these lines, he reconceived the department’s introductory survey course “to investigate what the status of art was at different historical moments: how were those big pictures part of the visual experience of people?” As a student notes, “in every instance, Dr. Silver has triumphed not only as a wellspring of knowledge—one that extends well beyond the confines of art history —but also as a gifted mentor devoted to the cultivation of critical thinking among his students.”