Art History Core Program

The Art History discipline is designed to develop students' visual arts literacy, as well as critical and interpretive thinking skills. In the Art History core program, students receive a solid grounding in the history of Western art as well as the art of certain non-Western cultures. The Art History core program introduces the principal terminology, methods, and questions that comprise the study of art history, thus enabling students to competently discuss and understand the major issues of art history and the central debates of art historical criticism. ARTH101 presents an overview of the language, themes, and techniques most frequently used in art and its study, as well as the tools needed to approach visual art from an art historical perspective. ARTH110 and ARTH111 survey the history of Western art from prehistoric times to the present. Elective courses deepen students' understanding of how the ideas and movements (political, religious, philosophical, etc.) of a historical moment are suggested through visual forms, and how visual forms have influenced the collective ideas of the culture in which they were produced or viewed.