Peter Holliday
Peter J. Holliday earned a B.A. from Columbia University and M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from the Department of the History of Art at Yale University. He began his teaching career at the University of Houston and then CSU San Bernardino, where he rose to associate professor and served as chair of the Art Department. He arrived at CSULB in 1998 and became a full professor in 2004. Holliday has also been a visiting professor at the University of Southern California.
His teaching at CSULB ranged from the art history survey course to advanced lecture courses on ancient Mediterranean art, especially the arts of the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans. His seminars explored various aspects of classical art and also themes across the history of art. Although his courses tended to focus on the primacy of the objects themselves, he also taught a seminar on the history of art history where students dived deeply into the foundational texts of the field.
Holliday has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including fellowships and grants from the American Academy in Rome, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Getty Research Institute, Huntington Library, Museum, and Gardens, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Samuel H. Kress Foundation. He has served on committees and juries for the Archaeological Institute of America, College Art Association, J. Paul Getty Trust, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Society of Architectural Historians.
Holliday’s scholarship explores the intersection of Hellenistic conventions, Etruscan and Italic practices, and Roman monuments. His research also investigates how later societies receive and construct the classical past. He edited and contributed to Narrative and Event in Ancient Art (Cambridge 1993), which examines the deployment of diverse narrative structures in visual representations commemorating historical events. In The Origins of Roman Historical Commemoration in the Visual Arts (Cambridge 2002), he demonstrates how Roman commemorative art intertwined narrative, style, and politics, thereby providing insights into elite achievements, societal values, and the ideals of the Roman Republic. American Arcadia: California and the Classical Tradition (Oxford 2016) examines how Californians fashioned their identities and built environment through the lens of classical antiquity. More recently, Holliday published Power, Image, and Memory: Historical Subjects in Art (Oxford 2024), which explores how art across time and cultures commemorating historical events shapes collective memory and national identities, highlighting the deliberate use of narrative techniques to convey political ideologies and power. His articles and reviews have appeared in the American Journal of Archaeology, Art Bulletin, Etruscan Studies, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, J. Paul Getty Museum Journal, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, and in various edited collections and scholarly volumes.
Peter Holliday transferred to emeritus status in 2023 but remains active in the field.
- PhD, Yale University
- MA, Yale University
- BA, Columbia University
The Fascination with the Past: John Henry Parker’s Photographs of Rome, exhibition catalogue, University Art Gallery, California State University, San Bernardino, 24 April-24 May 1991.
Narrative and Event in Ancient Art, editor and contributor, Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
The Origins of Roman Historical Commemoration in the Visual Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
American Arcadia: California and the Classical Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
