The Art History B.A. Program | B.A. Academic Requirements | Minor in Art History | The Art History M.A. Program | M.A. Academic Requirements | Undergraduate Courses | Graduate Courses | Faculty

The Art History M.A. Program: Graduate Courses

Required courses
Electives and special offerings

Please note that art history graduate courses are limited to art history M.A. students (and M.F.A. students in the School of Art+Design who have been accepted in both programs). There are no course prerequisites.

Required Courses

Pro-seminar: Method and Theory in Art History
ARH 5101 / 4 credits / Alternate years
The major theoretical orientations and methodologies associated with art historical study are discussed and critiqued. Methods reviewed range from connoisseurship to the iconographical and social-historical. Theories surveyed include formalist, Marxist, literary, feminist, psychoanalytic, and new-historicist concerns that dominated 20th-century interpretative practice. Required for M.A. students.

Master’s Colloquium I: History and Theory of Modern Art
ARH 5325 / 4 credits / Fall
A seminar that considers topics and theoretical models that inform students’ understanding of modern and contemporary art. Within this framework, critics, art historians, and artists are invited to give lectures and lead seminars on their particular research interests. Required for M.A. students.

Master’s Colloquium II: Critical Issues in Contemporary Art
ARH 5326 / 4 credits / Spring
A directed investigation of a specific set of issues in contemporary art and culture. The focus, which changes from year to year, introduces students to critical and theoretical models central to contemporary cultural analysis. Invited artists, art historians, and critics participate through individual lectures, seminars, or directed collaborations with students. Required for M.A. students.

Master’s Thesis
ARH 5990 / 4 credits / Every semester
Supervision of research and writing of the master’s thesis. To be taken twice in consecutive semesters (8 credits total).

Electives

The Avant-Gardes
ARH 5010 / 4 credits / Alternate years
Since the 1800s, the avant-gardes have tried to resist the delimited role of fine art in Western culture. In this course, students examine the strategies that avant-garde artists have used to reconnect their art practice with the more contentious areas of social and political life.

The Sixties Revisited
ARH 5020 / 4 credits / Alternate years
Students revisit the plurality of movements and styles that flourished throughout the 1960s and examine the contexts from which these provocative innovations emerged.

Aesthetics and Politics
ARH 5105 / 4 credits / Alternate years
The relationship between artistic practice and the social realm is addressed, with emphasis on the development of the avant-garde in the 19th and 20th centuries, the role of artists in contemporary political discourse, and the theoretical discourse that constitutes the larger debate on these issues.

The Invisible Seventies
ARH 5120 / 4 credits / Alternate years
The 1970s are often thought about in frivolous terms, as the decade of disco and bell-bottoms. In art, this period is often overshadowed by the radical avant-gardes of the 1960s and new developments in art during the 1980s. This seminar reconsiders the art and culture of the ’70s in the context of social and political currents of the period.

Dada and the Readymade
ARH 5135 / 4 credits / Alternate years
This seminar focuses on the inception of the “readymade” and the abandonment of traditional forms of painting in the work of Marcel Duchamp, as well as the later development of readymade practices in the context of New York and Paris Dada. The history of the readymade as an artistic strategy is traced.

Collections Research/Neuberger Museum
ARH 5145 / 3 credits / Fall
A graduate-level independent study based on objects in the Neuberger Museum of Art. Students undertake independent research projects on works in the Museum’s collection, investigating issues of documentation, provenance, condition, and interpretation.

The Body in Modern Art
ARH 5156 / 4 credits / Alternate years
While ostensibly a theme steeped in naturalism and verisimilitude, the body in art throughout the modern era was actually a topic greatly influenced by contexts, hierarchies, and systems. This course investigates the way “natural” bodies were represented from Goya through World War I.

Paranoid Modernism
ARH 5160 / 4 credits / Special topic (offered irregularly)
Examines the relationship between madness and modernism, focusing on the psychological extremes associated with paranoia and overinterpretation as they impinged upon the avant-garde art movements of the 20th century.

American Art to 1913
ARH 5161 / 4 credits / Spring
Surveys American painting, sculpture, decorative arts, and architecture until the opening of the Armory Show in 1913. The course explores the distinctiveness of the American art tradition.

Design Criticism
ARH 5170 / 4 credits / Special topic (offered irregularly)
An investigation of design, from automotive bodies to print advertising and Internet design, as a subject open to the traditional and nontraditional methods used in critical thinking and writing. Approaches toward analyzing and thinking about design include semiotic, gender, and postcolonial studies, as well as formal and psychoanalytic analysis.

20th-Century Photography
ARH 5193 / 4 credits / Special topic (offered irregularly)
A seminar examining the history of photography within both the historical and the neo-avant-gardes. Special attention is given to photographic activities of the Weimar Republic, the Soviet avant-garde, surrealism, and American pictorialism, modernism, and FSA documentary work, as well as the postwar formations of the New York School, conceptual art, and photographic postmodernism.

Introduction to Museum Studies
ARH 5200 / 4 credits / Alternate years
Topics range from the history of art museums to current theories and methodologies of display and museum administration. In addition to class discussion, students meet with staff members at the Neuberger Museum of Art and other institutions to learn the basics of museum operations, including curatorial work, exhibition design, registration, educational and public programming, marketing and public relations, and finance. On- and off-campus museum visits required.

Retro: Revivals in Art and Design
ARH 5230 / 4 credits / Special topic (offered irregularly)
A survey of revivals that have influenced visual culture from the mid-19th century until today, emphasizing larger cultural, historical, and theoretical developments. Movements and themes include the Gothic Revival, Arts and Crafts, historicist elements within Art Nouveau and Art Deco, the postwar rediscovery of Art Nouveau, and the engagement of postmodern design with earlier forms.

German Art: 1900–Present
ARH 5245 / 4 credits / Special topic (offered irregularly)
When modernism is discussed in art history, it is generally dealt with in terms of the formal, stylistic advances of French art. In the case of 20th- and 21st-century German art, form follows feeling. This course surveys significant movements of German art from Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter to the present.

The Russian Avant-Garde
ARH 5250 / 4 credits / Alternate years
Despite a growing interest in the work of the Russian avant-garde, there is still relatively little known about the artists of the late Russian Empire and the early Soviet Union. This course addresses the broad scope and multidisciplinary practice of Russian modernism, from the shocking primitivism of The Rite of Spring to the cold pragmatism of constructivism.

Theorizing Design
ARH 5300 / 4 credits / Special topic (offered irregularly)
Why design? Why consume? What is desire? Are you what you make? Are you what you consume? How does design communicate? Design is a complex activity that touches on fields as diverse as psychoanalysis and anthropology. This course provides a theoretical understanding of design practice, production, and use (consumption). Topics include graphic and digital design, furniture, architecture, and industrial design.

American Art and Architecture in the Age of the Machine
ARH 5340 / 4 credits / Alternate years
Focuses on objects and movements influenced by industrialization and mechanization in the U.S. between 1900 and 1940. Topics include the rise of the skyscraper in American architecture and its effect on painters and printmakers, the advent of the automobile and the assembly line’s replacement of the factory worker, and Dada’s expression of the havoc wreaked during World War I by new machine-age technology.

Origins of Modernity
ARH 5345 / 4 credits / Alternate years
Explores elements of modernity in art, architecture, and visual culture, with particular emphasis on new methodologies. Topics include public/private sphere issues, high and low culture, notions of self and identity, sexual difference and gender.

Toward a New Definition of Sculpture
ARH 5390 / 4 credits / Special topic (offered irregularly)
The term “sculpture” has become so elastic that it can encompass found objects, language art, video projections, and body art. Beginning with Auguste Rodin, the class explores the changes in concepts, methods, and materials that have brought about dramatic shifts in the critical approach to sculpture.

Modern Architecture
ARH 5400 / 4 credits / Spring
Explores the interplay between technological innovations and stylistic trends in European and American architecture (1800–1980s). Special emphasis is placed on the contributions of major architects like Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Design History and Theory: 1750–Today
ARH 5405 / 4 credits / Alternate years
Examines the history of design as it parallels the history of technology and industrialization. Covering a variety of design disciplines, including architecture and urban planning, graphic design, fashion, and industrial design, this course focuses less on aesthetics than on the cultural programs that have shaped buildings, objects, and communication systems for more than two centuries.

Seminar: Rauschenberg
ARH 5445 / 4 credits / Special topic (offered irregularly)
The work of Robert Rauschenberg is examined in the context of postwar neo-avant-garde activities in the U.S. and in relation to the work of contemporaries like Jasper Johns and John Cage. Students also review recent theoretical debates about the meaning and significance of the artist’s work.

19th-Century Art
ARH 5510 / 4 credits / Special topic (offered irregularly)
European art from the French Revolution to 1900, with movements in France, Germany, and England receiving particular attention. Major artists studied include David, Gericault, Delacroix, Ingres, Frederich, Constable, Turner, the pre-Raphaelites, Daumier, Manet, Degas, Monet, and Gauguin.

Art and/as Performance
ARH 5526 / 4 credits / Alternate years
Examines the development of performance and body-oriented work as a major mainstream in contemporary art practice, beginning with the work of Fluxus and Happenings and continuing to the present.

New Media and Contemporary Art
ARH 5530 / 4 credits / Alternate years
An examination of contemporary art outside of the traditional media of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Looking at painting-based performances of the 1950s, feminist body art, guerrilla television, and current political interventions based in digital media, students identify the strategies artists used to create new forms, and assess their success in modifying our understanding of the world.

Abstract Expressionism
ARH 5600 / 4 credits / Alternate years
Focuses on the leading American avant-garde painters who emerged in the 1940s, including Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still. The course relates their art to cultural, intellectual, social, and political developments of the period, with special attention to recent revisionist approaches to Abstract Expressionism.

Madness and Modernism
ARH 5604 / 4 credits / Alternate years
A variety of intersections between extreme mental conditions and the production of works of art during the modern period are investigated. Topics include connections between creativity and mental instability, artists with a history of mental disorder, and theories about stylistic or formal affinities between madness and art.

Abstraction in Modern Art
ARH 5610 / 4 credits / Alternate years
A graduate-level investigation of the stages involved in the pursuit of abstraction and the nonrepresentational in modern art, with special attention given to Kandinsky and Mondrian.

Surrealism
ARH 5640 / 4 credits / Special topic (offered irregularly)
Presents a historical approach to the development of the Surrealist movement, from its inauguration in Paris in the 1920s to its later transformations. The course examines the multiple media in which the Surrealists worked, the contradictory approaches of such figures as André Breton and Georges Bataille, and influence of Surrealism on postwar artistic practices.

Exoticism in Modern Art
ARH 5700 / 4 credits / Alternate years
Explores reciprocal influences of Western and non-Western art in the modern period. Topics include diverse artistic movements like “Orientalism,” “Japonisme,” and “Primitivism.” The class also examines the impact of non-Western art on specific artists, including Delacroix, Manet, Whistler, Picasso, and Pollock.

Writing About Art
ARH 5720 / 4 credits / Alternate years
An examination of various types of writing about art, from visual analysis essays to art journalism, exhibition reviews, and research papers. Students study the critical characteristics of these different writing formats and learn to write their own reviews, essays, and papers.

Pop Art
ARH 5750 / 4 credits / Alternate years
Pop Art, initially regarded with suspicion and considered frivolous, has proved to be a significant and influential movement. Today, it is perceived as an art form that expresses serious social and political concerns. This course focuses on the emergence of Pop Art in England, the influence of American Pop Art on European artists, and the way in which Pop Art energizes conceptual art today. Artists covered include Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Gerhard Richter, Jeff Koons, and Damien Hirst.

Pop Art and Mass Culture
ARH 5755 / 4 credits / Special topic (offered irregularly)
In this historical approach to Pop Art, the evolving relationship between mass culture and the visual arts is surveyed, from the development of “modern life” painting in France in the late 19th century to the development of Pop in Britain and the U.S. in the mid-20th century. The legacy of Pop is examined in politically oriented practices of the 1970s and in post-Pop tendencies in contemporary art.

Feminist Approaches to Art and Theory
ARH 5885 / 4 credits / Special topic (offered irregularly)
An overview of the intersection between art history and feminist art practice, theory, and history. Although the artists covered are primarily women, their production is discussed within a larger artistic and cultural context when appropriate.

Updated June 27, 2008