Phyllis Bober, Scholar Who Specialized in Renaissance Art, 81

[DGH]

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Phyllis Pray Bober, a scholar of Renaissance art and its relationship to
classical antiquity, and a pioneering scholar in culinary history, died
on May 30, 2002, at her home in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, at the age of 81.

Ms. Bober, a professor emerita of the humanities at Bryn Mawr, was known
for her unusually wide range of interests, among them Roman provincial
sculpture, Renaissance architectural theory, the history of collecting
and antiquarianism, and the story of culture and cuisine.

Trained in archaeology at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York
University, she was chosen as a young scholar to organize a monumental
project, "The Census of Classical Works Known to the Renaissance," which
remained her focus for more than 40 years. The census grew into the
standard resource for the subject, and Ms. Bober considered it her most
significant work.

She often lectured, however, on historical cooking, which she said
offered lessons for the modern world regarding "conservation of energy,
nurture of our environment and elimination of food wastage."

Ms. Bober was known for her lavish banquets that recreated past
cuisines. For a class at Bryn Mawr, she prepared a Roman feast that
included an entire wild boar roasted in a college oven. At Oxford
University in 1992, she lectured on the culinary uses of marijuana
during the Italian Renaissance.

Her 1999 book, "Art, Culture and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval
Gastronomy" (University of Chicago), explored connections between food
and art from prehistory through the late Gothic period. She was working
on a second volume, covering the Renaissance through the early 20th
century, when she died. She also published "Renaissance Artists and
Antique Sculpture: A Handbook of Sources" in 1986.

Ms. Bober founded the department of fine arts at the old Heights campus
of New York University in the Bronx and served as its chairwoman from
1967 to 1973. In 1973 she became the dean of the Bryn Mawr College
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where she held appointments in two
departments, art history and classical and Near Eastern archaeology.

She served as president of the College Art Association from 1988 to
1990; was elected to the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome in 1995
and to the American Philosophical Society in 1999 and, because of her
work in culinary history, to the Dames d'Escoffier in 1995.