Hilary Ballon
Hilary Ballon was a widely beloved professor of Art History, specializing in American urbanism and Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture. She received her B.A. from Princeton and her Ph.D. from MIT, and joined the Columbia faculty in 1985.
Ballon was widely active at Columbia. She curated numerous exhibits on urban history and architecture at the Wallach Art Gallery. From 2002 to 2004, she served as the chair of the Art History Department and was director of Art Humanities. She had also chaired the Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid, served on the Presidential Search Committee, and was involved in fundraising efforts for the columbia Campaign. She was even tipped to possibly be in line for the deanship of Columbia College.
Among the awards she won were the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching, the Great Teacher Award, and the Philip and Ruth Hettleman Teaching Award.
Unfortunately, Ballon departed to head up NYU's insane reduplication of itself in Abu Dhabi.
