Linda Nochlin was born Linda Natalie Weinberg in Brooklyn, New York on January 30, 1931. She graduated from Vassar College in 1951 with a major in philosophy and a double minor in Greek and art history. She received a master's degree in 17th-century English literature at Columbia University and a doctorate at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts. She went on to teach at Vassar College, the Graduate Center in Manhattan, Stanford University, Williams College, Yale University, and New York University Institute of Fine Arts, where she taught from 1992 until retiring in 2013.
Nochlin was an art historian whose feminist approach permanently altered her field. She wrote several books including Realism, Gustave Courbet: A Study of Style and Society, and Misère: Representations of Misery in 19th-Century Art. She spent lots of time writing essays for magazines including The Art Bulletin, Art in America, and ARTnews. Her essay collections included The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth Century Art and Society; Women, Art and Power; and Representing Women. She also co-edited books including Woman as Sex Object: Studies in Erotic Art, 1730-1970 with Thomas B. Hess and The Jew in the Text: Modernity and the Construction of Identity with Tamar Garb. She died from cancer on October 29, 2017 at the age of 86.
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