Holger A. Klein
Each semester the Italian Academy invites prominent Columbia University professors to open one of their regularly scheduled classes to the public, bringing students and the community together in the Academy building. This fall the Academy welcomes professors from the departments of Art History, History and Music.
Holger A. Klein studied art history and early Christian archaeology at The Courtauld Institute of Art and Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität 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. From 2004–2007 he served as the Robert P. Bergman Curator of Medieval Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art 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), 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). In 2011, he received the 50th annual Mark Van Doren Award for Teaching. In 2012, he received the Columbia University Distinguished Faculty Award, which recognizes faculty who demonstrate unusual merit as teachers of undergraduate and graduate students as well as outstanding scholarship and service to the university.