Program Description

The undergraduate art history major at Purchase College serves those students who see the arts as central to the intellectual challenges that lie at the heart of college life. The study of art history introduces students to a wide range of visual culture. Our program offers study of the various forms of art and architecture: painting, sculpture, graphic arts, decorative arts, photography, and design. These media are approached through the contexts of social, cultural, and political history, theoretical methods, anthropology, and religious traditions. A large selection of courses covers all periods of history and many of the world’s cultures.

The undergraduate art history program is designed to introduce not only subjects but approaches: visual and stylistic analysis, criticism, iconography, historiography, and methodology. The architecture of New York City, the surrounding area, and the campus, along with the many city museums and the Neuberger Museum of Art on campus, are a living part of the general curriculum and are specific components in specialized courses. Internships and study abroad programs provide many opportunities to become involved in the art world outside the classroom. Upon graduation, many students choose to pursue their interest in art history through employment at museums and galleries. Other graduates have chosen to work in film production and publishing and as art handlers and transporters. Some have earned advanced degrees in art history, art therapy, and art education.

For information on the graduate (MA) program, please visit the art history program site.

Program Faculty

Requirements for the Major

• History of Art Survey I & II
  
• One pre-1800 art history course
• Junior Seminar in Art History
• Four additional art history courses
• Three courses in related disciplines/languages
• Two studio courses in the visual arts
• Senior Project in Art History

Representative Courses

Abstract Expressionism
Abstraction in Modern Art
Aesthetics and Politics
African American Art
African Art and Film
Albrecht Dürer and the German Renaissance
American Art and Architecture in the Age of the Machine
American Art to 1913
Art and/as Performance
Art History, Psychology, and Psychoanalysis
Art in the Age of Exploration
Art Since 1945
Baroque Art and Architecture
Collections Research/Neuberger Museum
Contemporary African Art
Dada and the Readymade
Design History and Theory: 1750–Today
Dutch Art
Early Italian Renaissance Art
Early Medieval Art and Architecture
English Art 1500–1850
Exhibitions Seminar
Exoticism in Modern Art
Field Trips to New York Museums and Galleries
French Art From LaTour to David
Globalism in the Visual Arts
History of Photography
Introduction to Modern Art
Introduction to Museum Studies
Introduction to the Structure and Function of Museums
Italian High Renaissance and Mannerism
Madness and Modernism
Making Art in Early Modern Europe
Mexican Art From the Revolution to the NAFTA Era
Modern Architecture
Museum Anthropology
New Media and Contemporary Art
19th-Century Art
Northern Renaissance Art
Origins of Modernity
Performance Art in the West African Diaspora
Picturing America: Art and American Identity to 1913
Pop Art
Postwar Art in Europe
Roman Art and Architecture
The African Presence in Western Art
The Avant-Gardes
The Caravaggio Effect
The Gentileschi Files
The Invisible Seventies
The Russian Avant-Garde
20th-Century Sculpture
Utopian Architecture
Venetian Art and Architecture
West African Art
Women Artists and Feminist Criticism
Writing Art Criticism

Representative Alumni

• Luis Croquer MA ’03, deputy director of art and education, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle
• Pamela Emerson Kiernan ’88, wealth management advisor, Merrill Lynch
• Rebecca Hejduk Morse ’93, MA in art history, University of Arizona; associate curator, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) photography department; formerly associate curator, Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles
• Emily O’Leary ’06, assistant curator, Derfner Judaica Museum and The Art Collection, The Hebrew Home, Riverdale, N.Y.
• C. Elizabeth Saperstein MA ’07, independent writer, researcher, and curator
• Jennifer Mangione Vogt ’93, principal at The Creative Compendium, Inc., Boca Raton, Fla.

For more information, please visit the art history program site.

Updated April 3, 2013

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