Spring 2024

Thomas Cummins Topics to be determined in consideration of interests of students.

Sarah Lewis, Joseph Koerner This graduate seminar is designed to consider: Why have monuments, particularly in the United States, become such points of controversy in recent years? What does the fixation on monuments in this historic moment have to teach...

Joachim Homann, Kate Smith Practicing art history in today’s increasingly mobile art world—whether as a field curator, academic researcher, critic, or other professional specialism—requires museum literacy, intellectual empathy, and the ability to work in...

Shawon Kinew “Truth to material should not be a criterion of the value of a work—otherwise a snowman made by a child would have to be praised at the expense of a Rodin or a Bernini,” so begins Rudolf Wittkower’s monograph on Gian Lorenzo Bernini quoting...

Jeffrey Hamburger Thematically and chronologically organized, the seminar will examine the history and typology of medieval reliquaries, the strangest yet most spectacular genre of medieval art object, and one that defies the categories of modern...

Jennifer Roberts, Matthew Saunders Incorporating both studio and seminar instruction, this intensive course will explore printmaking's history, trace its particular forms of intelligence, and test its future potential. The class will meet for three hours...

Suzanne Blier This seminar addresses questions of cultural display through the art and architecture of world fairs, mid-nineteenth century to present. Students are introduced to the seminal fair events beginning with the Crystal Palace in London, and...

Maria Gough, Vishal Khandelwal This comparative seminar examines the major role of textiles in architectural theory and practice, with a primary focus on India and Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries. Our objective is to think historically and cross...

Ewa Lajer-Burcharth This course explores the historical functions and cultural meanings of color in the period of early modernity (18th and early 19th centuries). Focusing on France and England, we will examine specifically the role color played in the...

Seth Estrin No category of object from ancient Greece has had a more outsized influence on the modern imagination than painted ceramics, especially the black- and red-figure vases produced in Archaic and Classical Athens. In antiquity, ceramic vessels...