HISTORIANS from South Africa

Top 2

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary South African Historians of all time. This list of famous South African Historians is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Griselda Pollock (b. 1949)

With an HPI of 42.14, Griselda Pollock is the most famous South African Historian.  Her biography has been translated into 15 different languages on wikipedia.

Griselda Frances Sinclair Pollock (born 11 March 1949) is an art historian and cultural analyst of international, postcolonial feminist studies in visual arts and visual culture. Since 1977, Pollock has been an influential scholar of modern art, avant-garde art, postmodern art, and contemporary art. She is a major influence in feminist theory, feminist art history, and gender studies. She is renowned for her innovative feminist approaches to art history which aim to deconstruct the lack of appreciation and importance of women in art as other than objects for the male gaze. Pollock conducts various studies that offer concrete historical analyses regarding the dynamics of the social structures that cause the sexual political environment within art history. Through her contributions to feminism, Pollock has written various texts exclusively focused on women in order to intentionally drift away from traditional art history that concentrated primarily on the work of male artists. Pollock's initiative enabled appreciation for female artists such as Mary Cassatt, Eva Hesse, and Charlotte Salomon. Her theoretical and methodological innovations, including her book Vision and Difference 1988, are still influential, and many of her remarks apply to contemporary concerns such as the political subtexts for women portrayed in advertising.

2. Wendy Beckett (1930 - 2018)

With an HPI of 37.05, Wendy Beckett is the 2nd most famous South African Historian.  Her biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Wendy Mary Beckett (25 February 1930 – 26 December 2018), better known as Sister Wendy, was a British Catholic religious sister and art historian who became known internationally during the 1990s when she presented a series of BBC television documentaries on the history of art. Her programmes, such as Sister Wendy's Odyssey and Sister Wendy's Grand Tour, often drew a 25 percent share of the British viewing audience. In 1997 she made her debut on US public television, with The New York Times describing her as "a sometime hermit who is fast on her way to becoming the most unlikely and famous art critic in the history of television." Beckett was formerly a member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.