Shulamith Behr
Shulamith Behr was a British art historian. She was a senior lecturer, and Honorary Research Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She was a specialist in 20th-century German Expressionism, with a particular interest in German and Swedish women artists.
Early life and education
Behr was born in South Africa, and earned a B.A. Honours degree in Fine Arts in 1969, from the University of Witwatersrand, winning the Henri Lidchi Prize as the top undergraduate in the History of Art. In 1971 she obtained a First Class Honours degree in the History of Art, and stayed on as a lecturer at the University of Witwatersrand until 1978. Behr completed her studies in the United Kingdom, earning an MA in Art History at Manchester University, and a PhD in Art History and Theory at the University of Essex.Career
Behr joined the faculty of the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1990, as Bosch Lecturer in German Art. In 2000 she was appointed Senior Lecturer in Twentieth-Century German Art, and in 2012 was named an Honorary Research Fellow.She was considered a leading expert in the field of German Expressionism, publishing and/or editing 10 books, curating 4 exhibitions and contributing to exhibition catalogues in the United Kingdom and Germany. In 2007/08 she held the post of Leverhulme and CRASSH Research Fellow at Cambridge University. The endowed a post in honour of Behr, Tangen Reader in 20th Century Modernism, at the instigation of her former pupil, Nicolai Tangen.
Behr became a specialist in women artists working in Germany and Sweden in the Expressionist period, and her publications include Women Expressionists and Women Artists in Expressionism: From Empire to Emancipation . She was also interested in artists and collectors in exile, echoing her family heritage as emigres to South Africa from eastern Europe, expressed in her publication ''Arts in Exile in Britain 1933–1945.''