By Kelly Broder (COM’27)
The Boston University Department of History of Art & Architecture (HAA) announced the creation of the Annual Fred Kleiner Graduate Research & Travel Endowment after receiving a gift of over $100,000 during Giving Day from beloved Professor Emeritus Fred Kleiner.
The fund will enable the department to grant an annual award of $5,000 to support the research and travel of an advanced HAA graduate student, Cynthia Becker, chair of the history of art & architecture, said. Kleiner envisions additional gifts to provide funding for more students each year.
“I want to make it more attractive for people to enter the field of art history,” Kleiner said. “Humanities teaching jobs are really hard to get. I think college teaching is the best profession in the world, but students will only devote five to eight years of graduate study leading to a PhD if they are fully funded and don’t have to take on debt.”
The study of art and architecture often requires fieldwork and travel to overseas museums, which can be expensive and unaffordable for many graduate students.
“It’s hard if you’re in a field like my own, where your research isn’t on Paul Revere and downtown Boston, but you have to go to Rome or Amsterdam or London or be on an excavation in Greece or Turkey,” Kleiner said. “So I wanted to establish a fund that would make those extras at least possible for students.”
Kleiner, who retired from teaching in 2020, joined the faculty at Boston University in 1978 in the History of Art & Architecture Department and was one of the founders of the Archaeology Department (now the archaeology program). He served five terms as chair of history of art & architecture and was also editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Archaeology for 13 years.
Aside from the scores of articles, reviews, and books published by Kleiner, he is also the longtime author of the most widely read art history textbook in the world, Gardner’s Art through the Ages. “It continues to be used in two of our gateway art history courses. Students loved Professor Kleiner’s classes because he literally ‘wrote the book,’” Becker said.
According to Becker, the first award was given to Bailey Benson, a PhD candidate specializing in ancient Roman art and archaeology, with a focus on sculpture and portraiture.
“I wish I were in a position to just give $5 million and then we would be in the green forever,” Kleiner said. “I don’t have tons of money, but I’m happy to spend what I have this way.”