Ideas

In November 1954, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to a magazine in which he declared that, were he a young man again, he would not try to become a scientist: “I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree...

In 1930, the Institute was created as an academic retreat for the pursuit of daring research, unfettered by material constraints. From the beginning, political turmoil around the world interfered with this dream. This exhibit traces key moments in this history, focusing on questions of displacement and academic freedom in Europe, the United States, and Latin America from the 1930s to the 1970s. 

To Albert Einstein, she was “the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began.” More straightforward in his praise, Einstein’s fellow Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Hermann...

In 2007, when Ségolène Royal announced her candidacy to the Socialist primary for the presidential election, Laurent Fabius, former prime minister under President François Mitterrand, ironically commented: “But who will take care of the kids?” an...

The Museum of Modern Art has published Robert Rauschenberg, a catalogue of short essays by eminent scholars, including Professor Yve-Alain Bois, and emerging new writers focus on specific moments throughout Rauschenberg’s career exploring his...

Les Presses du Reel has published La Peinture comme Modèle, a new French edition of Painting as Model (MIT Press, 1990) by Yve-Alain Bois, Professor in the School of Historical Studies, a collection of essays that seek to redefine the status of...

On a beautiful overlook near the university, a middle-aged man is enjoying the view of the majestic Fjord. Judging from his clothing, he is a stonemason from the quarry just below him. But actually, he is a professor at the university who often...

An hour south of Wall Street,
past tulips, toddlers on swings,
cyclists, runners, Frisbees tossed
by girls in shimmering orange shorts,
I walk to the Institute library
to borrow the Shorter O.E.D.
laid by to welcome my stay.
A lay guest here before...

Few twentieth-century historians deserve a full-scale biography more than Ernst Kantorowicz (1895–1963) on the basis both of “work” and “life.” More than fifty years after his death Kantorowicz remains one of the most influential of all medieval...

In this public lecture, hosted by the Institute on April 28, Jacco Dieleman, Member (2016) in the School of Historical Studies, Associate Professor of Egyptology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a 2016­–17 Shelby Cullom Davis Fellow...