Faculty

David G. Mitten

James Loeb Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology

On leave during spring term 2007–2008

David Gordon Mitten is George M. A. Hanfmann Curator of Ancient Art, Emeritus, Harvard University Art Museums. He is also a full member of the Department of History of Art and Architecture and is Associate Director of the Sardis Expedition for Harvard University. He has spent 17 summers in the field at Sardis, Turkey with the Harvard-Cornell Archaeological Exploration of Sardis.

Interested in all areas of classical antiquity, he has specialized in publishing classical bronzes, including, with S. F. Doeringer, Master Bronzes from the Classical World (1967), Classical Bronzes Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI (1975), and, with Arielle P. Kozloff, The God's Delight: The Human Figure in Classical Bronze (1988).

Professor Mitten teaches courses on Greek and Roman archaeology and art history from large-scale surveys to seminars. His course in the Harvard Core Program, Literature and Arts B-21, "The Images of Alexander the Great," is designed to help undergraduate students explore the uses that rulers throughout history have made of images, especially in the wake of Alexander the Great's personality and career.

For a number of years he has taught a survey course on Greek art, architecture, and archaeology, along with seminars on Greek sculpture, vase painting, bronzes, and Greek coinage utilizing the excellent collection in the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. He also teaches courses and seminars on Aegean, Anatolian, and Achaemenian Persian art and archaeology. For the past fifteen years he has taught with Helmut Koester of the Harvard Divinity School the seminar, "Archaeology and the World of the New Testament," in which participants present their final finished reports on-site in Greece and Turkey.

Prof. Mitten has taught regularly in the Harvard Extension School on both the survey and seminar levels and has supervised many theses for the Master of Liberal Arts program there. He has also lectured widely on study trips to the Mediterranean area for Harvard Alumni Association and the Harvard Art Museums. He is working on a book surveying the entire subject of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan bronzes.