About Us

The Art History Department studies the forms, functions, meanings, and theoretical underpinnings of the visual arts, broadly construed to encompass such activities as performance, construction, and installation as well as painting, sculpture, photography, and architecture.

Our department considers works of art in historically and culturally specific ways, situating them within systems of belief, habits of visual literacy, practices of self-formation, social and political ideologies, patterns of sacred and secular discourse, assumptions about intentionality and authority, and currencies of global and transnational exchange. We comprise four collaborative faculty clusters: Ancient Mediterranean and American; Medieval/Renaissance/Baroque; Modern/Contemporary European, American, and African; and Architectural Studies.

As a department we strive to introduce students to a rich variety of approaches to art and its study, to model for them analytical and critical thinking, and to encourage lucid writing and thoughtful response. At the graduate level, it is our mission to train students in the methods and practices of the field and to prepare them for advanced, artwork-based, interdisciplinary research with a respect for primary evidence and cultural contexts, past and present, so that they can successfully pursue careers in academic or museum work with benefit for the broader community.