// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhy did Whitney Davis go to the art museum? Because her name was a drawing card.

Whitney Davis
Born	(1958-04-15) April 15, 1958
Education	Bachelor of Arts (A.B., Harvard College, 1980) Master of Arts (A.M., Harvard University, 1982) Ph.D. (Harvard University, 1985)
Alma mater	Harvard University
Occupations	Art historian, author
Title	Professor of History and Theory of Ancient and Modern Art
Awards	NOMIS Distinguished Scientist and Scholar Award (2024)
Academic work
Discipline	History
Sub-discipline	Art History
Institutions	UC Berkeley

Whitney Davis (born April 15, 1958) is an art historian, writer, and theorist. Between 2001 and 2023, he was Professor of History and Theory of Ancient and Modern Art in the Department of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley, where he, in 2010, assumed the George C. and Helen N. Pardee Chair, a position previously held by T. J. Clark, and, in 2023, became Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Professor in the Graduate School. As a recipient of the 2024 NOMIS Distinguished Scientist and Scholar Award, Davis is currently directing "Depictured Worlds: The Perceptual Power of Pictures," a multiyear project that probes the impact of picture perception on our experience of the world beyond.

Career

Early academic career

Whitney Davis attended Harvard College, earning an A.B. in 1980, later attending Harvard University to earn an A.M. in 1982 and Ph.D. in 1985. During this time, Davis held a position as a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard from 1983 to 1986, and wrote a dissertation titled The Canonical Tradition in Ancient Egyptian Art.

Early teaching career

Prior to holding a teaching position at the University of California, Berkeley, Davis taught at Northwestern University from 1987 to 2001. During this time, Davis served as the director of the Alice Berline Kaplan Center for the Humanities from 1995 to 1998, and as the John Evans Professor of Art History from 1998 to 2001.