Art History Courses

ARTH 952: Seminar in Museum Studies

Instructor: Sherman | M 2:30PM – 5:10PM

This research seminar introduces students to the theoretical and methodological framework of critical museum studies and asks them to engage with it in their own research. Our readings will focus on three areas: influential texts from the late twentieth century that helped establish a critical approach to the history of museums; recent efforts by museums to recount their own histories, such as “Making the Met,” a 2020 show marking the 150th anniversary of the Metropolitan Museum; and scholarship integrating art history, anthropology, and post-colonial studies around the problem of restitution of artifacts from Western museums to source countries. Students will write a substantial research paper on a museum, exhibition, or collection, historical or contemporary, of interest to them.

ARTH 971: The Art of Drawing in Early Modern Europe 

Instructor: String | W 2:30PM – 5:10PM 

Drawing was an essential skill for the early modern artist. It was the foundation of paintings, prints, works of sculpture, and a wide variety of decorative objects. But drawings were increasingly also produced as finished works of art. This seminar explores developments in this graphic art and takes as its focal point the collection of drawings donated to the Ackland Art Museum by Dr. Sheldon Peck and Dr. Leena Peck. It is primarily designed to coordinate with a major exhibition of these drawings, entitled Drawn to Life: Master Drawings from the Age of Rembrandt in the Peck Collection at the Ackland Art Museum, which opens in September 2022. Each student in this seminar will conduct extensive research into seventeenth-century Dutch drawings, with opportunities for close study that will form the basis of a sustained research project. 

ARTH 982: Art and Environments

Instructor: Cao | Th 2:00PM – 4:40PM

This course focuses on artistic engagements with the environment, primarily in North America from the eighteenth century to the present. While we will study a range of artists, practices, and movements from furniture making to Land Art, our main objective is methodological. Together we will define ecocritical art history and try to understand, expand, and challenge its parameters and goals. Along with art historical scholarship, we will read texts in environmental history, history of science, and materiality studies. The course is organized thematically by ecosystem, with topics such as forest, ocean, desert, and garden. Students will undertake independent research projects and participate in pedagogical exercises around teaching the environmental humanities.