David Rosand

David Rosand CC '59 PhD '65 is the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History.

Rosand graduated from Brooklyn Tech High School before attending Columbia, where he was an editor and cartoonist for the Jester. After college, he wanted to be an abstract expressionist painter, but was frightened by the prospect of being alone with a canvas, and returned to the university. While in grad school he fell in love with Venice, spending years there on Fulbright and other scholarships.

He has officially been on the faculty since 1964 and is chair of the Wallach Art Gallery Committee, has twice been chair of the Art History Department, served as director of Art Humanities, and was chairman of the Society of Fellows in the Humanities. He has been instrumental in acquiring, developing, and fundraising Casa Murano, the Columbia study center in Venice.

Together with English professor Robert Hanning he started a Core Curriculum-inspired seminar on Renaissance art and literature at the West End during the 1968 protests as a means to shield their students from the police.

Rosand was one of the "Tenured Teachers of the Core" given the Alexander Hamilton Medal in 1994 and has also won a Great Teacher Award (1997) and the Award for Distinguished Service to the Core Curriculum (2000). In 2010, he was honored with a John Jay Award.

He plans to retire in June.