[1] He is the J.R. Herbert Boone Professor Emeritus of Humanities and Art History at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States.
[1] In the fall of 1961, Fried began his friendship with the sculptor Anthony Caro, who invited him to write the introduction to his Whitechapel Art Gallery exhibition in 1963.
In 1965 he curated the exhibition "Three American painters: Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Frank Stella" at Harvard's Fogg Art Museum.
The essay inadvertently opened the door to establishing a theoretical basis for Minimalism as a movement based in a conflicting mode of phenomenological experience than the one offered by Fried.
"[12] In more recent years, Fried has written several long and complex histories of modern art, most famously on Édouard Manet, Gustave Courbet, Adolph Menzel, and painting in the late 18th century.