Diana Krumholz McDonald
Part-time Faculty, Ancient Art
BA, Fine Arts, Harvard University
PhD, Columbia University, 1989
Dissertation: Serpent Imagery on Ancient Near Eastern Pottery
Fields of Interest:
Diana McDonald has two primary geographic fields of interest: the art and archaeology
of the Ancient Near East and that of the Pre-Columbian world. She is particularly
interested in animal iconography, and aspects of evolutionary psychology which
may help to explain the very origin of art and symbolic images. She has been
focusing on fourth & third millennium animal imagery in Mesopotamia, as
well as animal symbolism in the art of Mesoamerica and Peru.
Teaching:
Diana McDonald teaches FA207: The Ruins of Ancient America. She has also taught
FA211: Art of the Ancient Mediterranean, which has been renamed FA 204: The
Roots of Civilization: Ancient Near Eastern and Aegean Art.
Dr. McDonald also gives lectures at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, including semester course series covering the Ancient Near East as well as PreColumbian Art.
Profile:
Dr. McDonald has worked in museums, including the Metropolitan Museum in NY,
the National Museum of Indonesia in Jakarta (as a Henry Luce Scholar) the Ministry
of Culture in Warsaw, Poland, and as a curator for the Arthur M. Sackler Collections
in NY, and previously taught art history at Columbia University. She also has
lectured recently at such venues as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the
Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta. In 2005 she organized and was the lecturer
on a Massachusetts College of Art course which toured Brazil, on the "Art
and Culture of Brazil."
Representative publications:
The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad, ed. by Milbry Polk and Angela Schuster,
Harry Abrams, NY (2005) - contributed nine essays
"The Serpent as Healer: Theriac and Ancient Near Eastern Pottery," in Source: Notes in the History of Art; Vol XIII, No. 4, Summer (1994)
Crosscurrents: The Art of the Ancient Mediterranean: Department of Education, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1994)
Ancient Iranian Ceramics from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, preface for exhibition booklet (1987)
Exhibitions:
Curator, "Ancient Iranian Ceramics from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections;" Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, 1987-88.
Mounted exhibitions: "Art of the Andes: Pre-Columbian Sculptured and Painted Ceramics from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections," Memphis, 1986
"Art of Costa Rica: Pre-Columbian Painted and Sculpted Ceramics from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections," Edinburgh 1985, Duke University 1985-86, Cedar Rapids 1986.
Collaborator, "Animals Monsters and Demons in the Ancient Near East,"
Morgan Library, NY, 1983
