For philosophers, art is also in the mind

Many college professors start with a broad range of interests, but often it’s the example of a gifted teacher that shows them the way. That was the case with Dr. Jonathan Gilmore. “I was a pre-med student taking hard science courses, but I had to take a philosophy course as well, and I had an extraordinarily dynamic art history professor. And then I thought, ‘This is what I want to do.’ So I shifted career plans, moved to New York right after college, enrolled at Columbia and did a PhD in Philosophy, but also studied for the PhD in art history at the same time.” “Some people enter into philosophy because they’re interested in philosophy itself. I was actually interested in art,” he says. A native of Shaker Heights, near Cleveland, Ohio, Gilmore is today an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College/CUNY