Prof. Dr. Henry Keazor has been Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Heidelberg since 2012. He previously taught at Saarland University from 2008. 

Henry Keazor studied art history, German studies, musicology and philosophy at the universities of Heidelberg and Paris (Sorbonne IV). In 1996, he completed his doctorate in Heidelberg with a thesis on the French baroque painter Nicolas Poussin. After working as a research assistant at the Institute of Art History in Florence and at the Institute of Art History at the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University of Frankfurt in Frankfurt am Main, among others, he habilitated there in 2005 with a study on the painting reform of the Carracci. He subsequently received the Heisenberg Fellowship from the German Research Foundation (DFG). Keazor has been a full member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities since 2015. In 2020, he was honoured by the Académie française with the “Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises”.

In addition to French and Italian Baroque painting, Keazor’s research focuses on the illustration of the discovery of America in the early modern period, contemporary architecture (particularly that of Jean Nouvel), visual art and its reception, for example in literature and the media, as well as music videos. Together with Thorsten Wübbena, he curated the 2011 exhibition “Imageb(u)ilder: Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft des Videoclip” in Gronau in 2011. He is also interested in the phenomenon of art forgery. In spring 2021, he founded the first university collection of forged artworks dedicated to teaching and research at the Institute for European Art History at Heidelberg University. He also curated exhibitions on the subject in 2016 (“FAKE: Fälschungen, wie sie im Buche stehen”: Heidelberg University Library) and 2024 (“Kunst und Fälschung: Aus dem Falschen das Richtige lernen”: Kurpfälzisches Museum Heidelberg).

A list of publications is available at https://www.uni-heidelberg.de/fakultaeten/philosophie/zegk/iek/mitarbeiter/keazor/publikationen.html.