The University will extend a tenure offer to Assistant Professor of Fine Arts Joseph L. Koerner, department members said yesterday.

Koerner, whose primary areas of expertise are Northern Renaissance painting and art of the Reformation, also has experience in Romantic and modernist art.

"It's quite amazing to find an art historian who can be so inventive and creative in so many periods," said Professor of Fine Arts Norman Bryson.

Koerner's unusually large range, Bryson said, makes Koerner exceptional enough to receive tenure as a junior professor. Harvard's lack of tenure track positions and tenured associate professorships makes such appointments relatively rare.

"[He] is an individual who fortu- nately had sufficient public, professionalrecognition and brilliant pages from his pen to beable to make it past all of these obstacles andhurdles," Bryson said.

Students have regularly criticized theUniversity over the last decade for not grantingtenure to popular junior professors.

Koerner, who is on sabbatical in Berlin, hasnot informed the University of whether he willaccept the lifetime post.

Fine Arts Department Chair John K. G. Sherman,who is Boardman professor of Fine Arts, saidKoerner's tenure offer represents a much-neededchange in the department's treatment of assistantand associate professors.

The Fine Arts Department, Shearman said, "hasto live down a rather poor reputation for takingits junior faculty seriously."

Koerner's appointment, he said, "makes its veryclear that Harvard and the Fine Arts Departmentare serious about a new attitude towards juniorfaculty."

The University did not want to lost Koerner,said Marjorie B. Cohn, a senior lecturer of FineArts and head conservator of technical studies inthe Harvard University Art Museums.

"It was an important thing for us to get him,"Cohn said.

She said the tenure decision was motivated by a"real fear that if we didn't make him a tenuredprofessor, he would get away from us."

Shearman said that some of Koerner'sphilosophies and methods, such as an emphasis onhistoriography and reception theory, are not oftenused by other Fine Arts faculty.

"He brings a tremendous vitality andintellectual energy to our department," Brysonsaid. "I'm really thrilled by the appointment."

Cohn said that Koerner's personality too, makeshim a desirable professor.