Claire Holt (art historian)

Born to an upper-middle class Jewish family as Claire Bagg in Riga, Russian Empire in 1901, Holt married Bernard Hopfenberg in 1920 and emigrated from the Soviet Union shortly thereafter with her husband.

[2] During this time, she also studied sculpture with Alexander Archipenko at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

From 1928 to 1930 she was employed as a reporter for The New York World, for which she wrote dance reviews under the pen name Claire Holt, which later became her legal name.

She returned to the US upon the start of World War II and served as a research assistant to anthropologist Margaret Mead at the Museum of Natural History.

[1] Her most important work of scholarship was Art in Indonesia: Continuities and Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967),[6] an interdisciplinary introduction to Hindu and Buddhist monuments of Indonesia and the heritage of Indian influence in the performance arts.