A Chicago native and the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants Daniel and Sophia Rapoport, Slive received his bachelor's degree in 1943 and DPhil in 1952, both from the
University of Chicago. He served in the
United States Navy Reserve during World War II, starting in his junior year of college, and was on active duty in the
Pacific Theater from 1942 to 1946.
Career
Slive was appointed to his first teaching position at
Oberlin College in 1950, but soon moved on to
Pomona College, where he became an assistant professor of art and chair of department from 1952 to 1954. While there, he published his first book, Rembrandt and His Critics, 1630–1730. In 1954, he joined
Harvard University, where he became a full professor in 1961. In 1960, was the first American professor to lecture in Russia under a Cold War exchange agreement.[2] He was appointed chair of the Department of Fine Arts in 1968, remaining in the post until 1971. In 1973, Slive was appointed Gleason Professor of Fine Arts and later concurrently became Director of the University's
Harvard Art Museums in 1975. He was the founding director during the creation and expansion of the
Arthur M. Sackler Museum. He retired from Harvard in 1991 as
emeritus professor and as the Elizabeth and John Moore Cabot Founding Director of the Harvard University Art Museums.[3] A
Festschrift containing 69 essays by his students was compiled and presented in his honor on his seventy-fifth birthday in 1995.[4]
Frans Hals, by Slive as editor, with contributions by
Pieter Biesboer, Martin Bijl, Karin Groen and Ella Hendriks, Michael Hoyle, Frances S. Jowell, Koos Levy-van Halm and Liesbeth Abraham, Bianca M. Du Mortier, Irene van Thiel-Stroman. Munich: Prestel-Verlag, and Antwerp: Mercatorfonds, 1989.
ISBN3791310321
Dutch Painting 1600–1800. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
ISBN9780300074512
Jacob van Ruisdael: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, Drawings, and Etchings. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
ISBN0300089724
^Schneider, Cynthia; Robinson, William W.; Davies, Alice I., eds. (1995). Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive, Presented on His Seventy-fifth Birthday. Cambridge: Harvard University Art Museums.