David M. Lubin

A native of Columbus, Ohio, Lubin attended four institutions of higher education before receiving his B.A. These include Principia College, the University of Michigan, the University of Southern California, and Ohio State University. While studying filmmaking as an undergraduate at the University of Southern California's School of Cinema, Lubin reviewed music for Rolling Stone.{{citation needed|date=October 2018}}

After independently studying film history in Paris, he received an M.A. and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1983. His first academic job was teaching art history and American studies at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, from 1983 to 1999, before accepting a position as the Charlotte C. Weber Professor of Art at Wake Forest University.{{cite web | url=https://www.chronicle.com/article/cornell-u-provost-named-u-of-chicago-president-wake-forest-u-finally-lures-art-scholar-from-colby-college-8956/ | title=Cornell U. Provost Named U. Of Chicago President; Wake Forest U. Finally Lures Art Scholar from Colby College | date=17 December 1999 }} In 2016–2017, he served as the inaugural Terra Foundation Visiting Professor of American Art at the University of Oxford.{{cite web|url=https://www.terraamericanart.org/2016/01/05/inaugural-terra-foundation-for-american-art-visiting-professor-announced|title=Inaugural Terra Foundation for American Art Visiting Professor at University of Oxford Announced|website=terraamericanart.org}} Lubin has received fellowship awards from Harvard University, Stanford University, Yale University, and the National Gallery of Art's Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, as well as the American Council of Learned Societies, the Getty Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.Lubin, David. "Anthony Newman Plays J.S. Bach." Rolling Stone, no. 69, October 1970, pp. 42 (Citation for the first of Lubin's Rolling Stones reviews).In 2004, Lubin was awarded the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Charles Eldredge Prize for "distinguished scholarship in American art."{{cite web|url=https://americanart.si.edu/research/awards/eldredge/recipients|title=Eldredge Prize Recipients|website=Smithsonian American Art Museum}}

In 2016, Lubin, along with Robert Cozzolino and Anne Knutson, curated the exhibition "World War I and American Art" for the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.{{cite web|url=https://www.pafa.org/exhibitions/world-war-i-and-american-art|title=World War I and American Art - PAFA - Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts|website=www.pafa.org|date=3 November 2014 }} The exhibition traveled in 2017 to the New-York Historical Society and the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville. Lubin, Cozzolino, and Knutson co-edited the exhibition catalogue, which was a finalist for the College Art Association's prestigious Alfred H. Barr Award.{{cite web|url=http://www.collegeart.org/news/2017/11/14/finalists-for-the-2018-morey-and-barr-awards|title=Finalists for the 2018 Morey and Barr Awards|first=College Art|last=Association|date=14 November 2017|website=collegeart.org}}

Aside from his record reviews in Rolling Stone and book reviews and op-ed pieces in various newspapers, including the Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, Lubin's published writing mostly consists of scholarly books and essays. His first book, Act of Portrayal: Eakins, Sargent, James,{{cite book |last1=Lubin |first1=David |title=Act of Portrayal: Eakins, Sargent, James |url=https://archive.org/details/actofportrayalea0000lubi |url-access=registration |date=1985 |publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=9780300032130 }} grew out of his 1983 Ph.D. dissertation. His second, Picturing a Nation: Art and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century America,{{cite book |last1=Lubin |first1=David |title=Picturing a Nation: Art and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century America |date=1994 |publisher=Yale University Press}} is a revisionist study of American painting in terms of race, gender, and class politics during the turbulent nineteenth century. Titanic{{cite journal |last1=Lubin |first1=David |title=Titanic |journal=BFI |date=1999}} (BFI, 1999), a monograph written for the British Film Institute's "Modern Classics" series, explores the artistic and cinematic antecedents of James Cameron's blockbuster movie.

Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of Images traces the public and private lives of Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy as rendered in photography from their courtship in 1953 to his assassination and funeral in 1963. The Cornell cultural historian Michael Kammen wrote, "(Lubin) provides a fresh methodology for the contextualization of American historical events—and our perception of them—that is likely to be pursued for years to come."Michael Kammen, review of Shooting Kennedy, American Studies, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Spring 2005), p. 153 In his book review for United Press International, Lou Marano wrote that "'Shooting Kennedy' is a carefully researched and emotionally evocative treatment of a cultural and political watershed."{{cite news |url=https://www.upi.com/Book-review-Shooting-Kennedy/26931067545887/ |title=Book review: 'Shooting Kennedy' |author=Lou Marano |date=October 30, 2003 |work=United Press International}}

Flags and Faces: The Visual Culture of First World War America{{cite book |last1=Lubin |first1=David |title=Flags and Face: The Visual Culture of First World War America |date=2015 |publisher=University of California Press}} is a slender volume containing expanded versions of the two Franklin D. Murphy Lectures in the History of Art that Lubin delivered at the University of Kansas in 2008. The essay on flags considers prowar and antiwar imagery in American art on the eve of the United States declaration of war on Germany in April 1917. The essay on faces charts the development of modern plastic surgery and cosmetic makeup in response to the brutal disfigurement of combatants in trench warfare.

In Grand Illusions: American Art and the First World War, Lubin provides a multidisciplinary examination of American art, society, and war in the early twentieth century.{{cite book|url=https://global.oup.com/academic/product/grand-illusions-9780190218614?cc=us&lang=en&|title=Grand Illusions: American Art and the First World War|date=4 May 2016|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780190218614}} Professor Jennifer Wingate wrote in Panorama: The Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, "In summary, readers will appreciate the breadth of subject matter in Grand Illusions, the inclusion of lesser-known cultural voices, and the eye-opening comparisons that connect themes and artwork in unexpected ways."{{cite journal |url=http://journalpanorama.org/grand-illusions-american-art-and-the-first-world-war/ |author=Jennifer Wingate |title=Grand Illusions: American Art and the First World War |journal=Panorama: The Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art |date=Summer 2017}} Yaëlle Azagury gave the book a more mixed review in the Washington Post, writing that "...his readings, which may be irritating to the political conservative or the more classic-minded, are intellectually provocative", but "he delivers a disparate collection of essays while failing to conclude whether, indeed, a cohesive national style emerged in the aftermath of the war."{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/how-did-american-artists-respond-to-the-horror-of-wwi/2016/08/18/223577a6-6312-11e6-be4e-23fc4d4d12b4_story.html |title=How did American artists respond to the horror of WWI? |author=Yaëlle Azagury |date=August 19, 2016 |newspaper=The Washington Post}}

Ready for My Close-up: The Making of ‘Sunset Boulevard’ and the Dark Side of the Hollywood Dream offers a cultural history about the making and lasting significance of Sunset Boulevard, whose piercing—and in many ways, prophetic—critiques of fame continue to resonate today. {{cite book|url=https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/david-m-lubin/ready-for-my-closeup/9781538739297/|title=Ready for My Closeup|date=12 August 2025|publisher=Grand Central Publishing|isbn=9781538739297}}

Lubin calls on us to slow down and be more mindful when looking at art, a process he models with his own "slow looking" at cultural artifacts such as paintings, photographs, and films:

"Classroom Patriotism," Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, vol. 3, no. 2 (Fall 2017),{{cite web|url=https://journalpanorama.org/patriotism-in-american-art|title=What Is the Role of Patriotism in the Study of American Art?|date=20 October 2017|website=journalpanorama.org}}

"Slow Looking," online essay for the History of Art at Oxford University (July 2017),{{cite web|url=https://oxfordarthist.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/slow-looking/|title=Slow Looking|date=26 July 2017|website=wordpress.com}}

"Art History as Collage: A Personal Approach," in Blackwell Companion to American Art, ed. John Davis, Jennifer Greenhill.{{cite book|title=A Companion to American Art|first=David M.|last=Lubin|date=23 January 2015|publisher=John Wiley & Sons, Ltd|pages=468–486|doi=10.1002/9781118542644.ch27|chapter = Art History as Collage|isbn = 9781118542644}}

In 1994, The Chronicle of Higher Education featured Lubin in a cover story by Scott Heller entitled "Art Historian as Provocateur."{{cite journal|url=https://www.chronicle.com/article/Art-HistorianProvocateur/92851|title=Art Historian and Provocateur|date=17 August 1994|journal=The Chronicle of Higher Education}}

Lubin occasionally appears on radio and television to talk about American art:

• Interview about Grand Illusions on C-Span's American History TV (December 11, 2016){{cite web|url=https://www.c-span.org/video/?438179-2/world-war-american-art|title=World War I and American Art|website=C-SPAN.org}}
• Featured expert on America Rising: The Arts of the Gilded Age, DVD, dir. Michael Maglaras (217 Films, released January 20, 2017){{cite web|url=https://www.amazon.com/America-Rising-Arts-Gilded-Age/dp/B06XGQFZ3P/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527551576&sr=8-1&keywords=america+rising+dvd|title=America Rising: The Arts of the Gilded Age|date=20 January 2017|via=Amazon}}
• "One Sculptor's Answer to WWI Wounds: Plaster, Copper and Paint" on NPR's All Things Considered (September 25, 2014){{cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/2014/09/25/351441401/one-sculptors-answer-to-wwi-wounds-plaster-copper-and-paint|title=One Sculptor's Answer To WWI Wounds: Plaster, Copper And Paint|website=npr.org}}

• Act of Portrayal: Eakins, Sargent, James (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985)
• Picturing a Nation: Art and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994)
• Titanic (London: British Film Institute, 1999)
• Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of Images (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003)
• Flags and Faces: The Visual Culture of America's First World War (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015)
• Grand Illusions: American Art and the First World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016)
• World War I and American Art, exhibition catalogue, co-edited with Robert Cozzolino and Anne Knutson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press in association with the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, 2016)
• Ready for My Close-up: The Making of Sunset Boulevard and the Dark Side of Hollywood (Grand Central Publishing, 2025)

Lubin is married to the travel organizer and writer Libby Lubin. Their children are Molly Lubin, a psychiatrist, and Gus Lubin, a journalist.{{cite journal |title=Lubin, David M. 1950– |journal=Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series |date=2009 |url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/lubin-david-m-1950}}

{{reflist}}

• [https://art.wfu.edu/david-lubin/ Wake Forest University web page and curriculum vitae]
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0bLw8gEll0 Interview of Lubin about Grand Illusion] on YouTube
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNaI5iDzYyY Lubin discussing "The Story and Significance of John Singer Sargent's 'Gassed'"] on YouTube
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xly6_9BK-AM Lubin on "Who was Anna Coleman Ladd?"] on YouTube
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk97vU-s-TQ Lubin on "The Role of Gender in the American Art of WWI"] on YouTube
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwCGwj4VllU Lubin on "Marcel Duchamp's Most Political Work of Art"] on YouTube

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