George Kubler; Art Historian

George Kubler, 84, an art historian and early scholar of pre-Columbian and Spanish colonial art. Born in Hollywood, Kubler grew up in Europe and was educated at Yale. He spent most of his career on the Yale faculty as Sterling professor of the history of art. But he occasionally taught for a term or so at other major universities, including UCLA and Harvard. Unusual in his field, Kubler in the 1930s concentrated on colonial architecture of Mexico and New Mexico while colleagues focused on Europe. Among his books were “The Religious Architecture of New Mexico,” “Art and Architecture of Ancient America,” and his best-read work, “The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things.” Kubler was one of the first to treat hieroglyphics and pictographs as visual forms as well as symbols of written language. On Thursday in Hamden, Conn.