Blair has served as the dual Norma Jean Calderwood University Professor of Islamic and Asian Art at Boston College, along with her husband, Jonathan M. Bloom.
She then continued education by receiving a Doctor of Philosophy in Art History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University in 1980, graduating in the same exact program as her husband, Jonathan M. Bloom, whom she married in that year.
After receiving her doctoral degree, she and Bloom were named Aga Khan Lecturers on Islamic Art and Architecture at Harvard University and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology until 1981.
In 2000, Blair and Bloom were named to the dual professorship of Norma Jean Calderwood University Professor of Islamic and Asian Art at Boston College.
[1] In 2006, they also began holding the joint post of Hamad bin Khalifa Endowed Chair of Islamic Art at Virginia Commonwealth University.