Students outside the Mahaney Arts Center.

Through courses across a wide continuum of times and cultures, students in the art history and museum studies track learn not only to articulate histories of visual production but also to think critically about the issues related to the reception, theoretical interpretation, and exhibition of cultural objects.

Students in the major will, by inquiring into the modes and meanings of visual arts and culture, do the following:

  • Develop their abilities as critical thinkers by questioning works of art and architecture and developing arguments about the circumstances of their production and meaning.
  • Learn to build extended arguments based upon composite evidence: visual, historical, and textual.
  • Engage creative research problems that, over time, yield new insights into art, architecture, history, and culture.
  • Become strong, convincing writers by using a variety of approaches to write about the history of the arts, architecture, and visual culture.
  • Become highly skilled at presenting their work through oral, public presentations.