Art history explores how visual images, artworks, and buildings express ideas, embody values, and shape how people understand themselves and the world. By better understanding the power of art and architecture in the past and present, majors are better able to use them to create a more just and sustainable future.
Our program offers courses that address a wide range of time periods and geographic areas, with particularly rich offerings in African, European, Latin American, and Middle Eastern art and architecture. We also offer distinctive courses such as Chemistry and Art, which explores art materials and conservation, and Practicing Art History, our rigorous introduction to looking at, researching, and writing about art. Faculty offer a wide variety of approaches to the study of the visual world.