Thomas Crow’s research and teaching interests extend from the late seventeenth century in Europe to the contemporary period, with particular attention throughout to what he terms “the interaction between artistic creation and social circumstance.” He has been a contributing editor at Artforum for twenty years. His first book Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris (1985) received multiple awards and is often credited with sparking renewed scholarly interest in this period. He has also published several acclaimed volumes on modern art and criticism, as well as essays on artists Gordon Matta-Clark and Robert Smithson.

“You won’t see Pop the same way” (Art Review) after reading The Long March of Pop: Art, Design, and Music, 1930–1995 (2015), Crow’s most recent book. He definitively broadens the context in which pop art is usually discussed, telling a deeper and more complicated story that encompasses folk art and folk music, advertising and rock album covers, and the art of Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst. Crow is currently working on the Paul Mellon Lectures he will give at the National Gallery in London and the Yale Center for British Art in 2017. His topic will be style, music, and art in London during the 1950s and 1960s.