John Spike

John Spike

John Thomas Spike (born November 8, 1951 in New York City) is an American art historian, curator, and author, specializing in the Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods. He is also a prominent contemporary art critic and past director of the Florence Biennale. In 2007, Spike was appointed to the faculty of the Masters program in Sacred Art History jointly offered by the European University of Rome and the Pontifical Athenaeum, ‘Regina Apostolorum'. In 2011, Spike became a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Childhood, youth, and personal life

Spike grew up in New York City and Tenafly, New Jersey where he was a friend and classmate of the actor Ed Harris at Tenafly High School. His father was the Rev. Robert Spike, a prominent figure in the civil rights movement in the 1960s[1] and his brother is Paul Spike, an author and the first American to be named editor of the British satirical magazine Punch. After undergraduate studies at Wesleyan University, he earned his PhD from Harvard University in art history in 1979. His dissertation was the first complete study of Mattia Preti (1613-1699), an important painter of the Caravaggio school. Spike was later awarded honorary citizenship of Taverna, the Italian city that was Preti's birthplace, in recognition of his studies of Preti. In 2013, Spike was knighted by the Sovereign Military Order of St. John of Malta in the United Kingdom.

He permanently resides in Williamsburg, Virginia with his wife Michèle Kahn Spike, a lawyer and biographer of Matilda of Tuscany, and is the father of one son, Nicholas.

Career as art historian

In the course of his career, Spike has organized art exhibitions and read lectures at important museums around the world, including the Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna; the Galleria degli Uffizi and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence; the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth; the Pierpont Morgan Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Musée du Louvre, Paris; the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; the National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. He has also read lectures at Harvard, Yale and Princeton Universities, and the University of Malta. He is permanent consultant to two Italian museums, the Museo Civico di Taverna and the Museo Civico di Urbania, as well as many years friend and consultant to the Cathedral Museum of Mdina and the National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, Malta. In 2006 Spike was also appointed to the Board of the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia.

Among the books Spike has published on the Florentine Renaissance are Masaccio (Abbeville Press, 1996) and Fra Angelico (Abbeville Press, 1997), both also available in Italian and French editions. His Fra Angelico, which also appeared in a German edition by Hirmer Verlag, was named “Art Book of the Year 1997” by the Hearst newspapers in the USA. His catalogue raisonné of the paintings of Caravaggio (2001) was published in a second Revised Edition in 2010. His "Young Michelangelo: The Path to the Sistine: A Biography" was published in 2010 (Vendome Press; ISBN 0-86565-266-X).[2][3]

His contributions to culture and history have been recognized in Italy by the bestowal of the Premio Anthurium, 1998, the Annual Medal of the Accademia delle Belle Arti di Messina, 2001, the Premio Anassilaos, 2002 and Man of the Year by the Tuscan American Foundation, Florence, 2006. For 2011, he has been appointed Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Career as contemporary art critic

Spike has written essays for books and exhibition catalogues on many contemporary artists, both in New York City and in Italy. In addition to his Michelangelo biography, he is currently overseeing the production of the Catalogue Raisonné for Richard Anuszkiewicz, the leading American artist of the Op Art movement. Spike's most noteworthy contribution to contemporary art has been his involvement with the Biennale Internazionale dell'Arte Contemporanea, Florence, Italy- more commonly known in English as the Florence Biennale. He was a member of the Jury for the inaugural exhibition in December 1997, and thereafter served as director from 1998-2005. In 2005, Spike was also the sole juror of the Turku Biennial in Turku, Finland as well as a member of the jury for the Triennale of India in New Delhi.

Bibliography

A. Books and exhibition catalogues on art and artists prior to 1800

B. Books and exhibition catalogues on art and artists after 1800

Notes

  1. Taylor Branch "Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65." Simon & Schuster 1998.
  2. http://www.amazon.com/Young-Michelangelo-Path-Sistine-Biography/dp/086565266X
  3. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/8330563/Young-Michelangelo-The-Path-to-the-Sistine-by-John-T-Spike.html

    External links