Fine Arts (FINH-GA)

This course will give you systematic approaches to analyzing and translating French text and the tools with which you can expand your understanding. Using texts in history of art, you learn the fundamentals of French grammar, how to use a dictionary and how to decipher the meaning of a text. You will learn how knowing certain grammar points, knowing how sentence structures work, and knowing essential vocabulary will give you the keys to understanding French. With the aim of preserving the essence and integrity of the original text, you will become proficient at understanding, critically analyzing, and accurately translating from French to English. No prior knowledge of French is required. Textbook and texts will be provided by the instructor. French Reading is a two-semester course: French Reading 1 is for those with no prior knowledge of French and is offered in fall. French Reading 2 is for those with basic knowledge of French and is offered in Spring.

The course is focused on translating complex texts, like scholarly literature on Art History and Archaeology. The objective of the course for the students is to learn the basic usage of written Italian language, to gain the ability to translate advanced texts and expert words, and to improve knowledge of Italian language and culture. The adopted methodology and strategies pivot on an intensive grammar introduction and revision, with focused exercises, acompanied by the reading, translation, and discussion on different type of specialized texts. The syntactic analysis of a text, along with the knowledge of the vocabulary used by Art Historian, leads the students to the choice of the appropriate translation technique, and to the correct understanding of scholarly texts. The course is open to beginners, intermediate, and advanced students: there will be an initial assessment of the level of knowledge of the participants, thereby the lesson will be tailored to meet the needs, the goals, and the skills of the learners.

Enhance your research skills by learning how to read and translate German scholarly texts. The courses are conducted in English, and RK1 does not require any previous knowledge of German. After completing both courses, RK1 and RK2, you will be able to independently read, understand, and translate texts. After completion of RK2, students will take the Reading Knowledge Exam. Coursebook: German Quickly: A Grammar for Reading German

This course is an introduction to the art and archaeology of the Greek world from 1050 to 480 BCE. While offering a detailed discussion of the urbanism, architecture, and visual arts of this period in their social and cultural context, this course explores critical questions about ancient art: including the birth of monumental architecture, the development of visual narrative, and the agency of images and monuments. The two requirements for the lecture are a final examination, which will encompass the material covered in the entire course, and a fifteen pages paper.

This course provides an overview of Medieval art and its major issues, moving chronologically from the Late Antique/Migration period to the Late Gothic. Students become familiar with key monuments and also the kinds of interpretations scholars have developed to give works meaning. Discussions focus especially on several wide-reaching themes: the aesthetic status of art and the theological role of images; the revival of classical models and visual modes; social rituals such as pilgrimage and crusading; the cult of the Virgin and the status of women in art; and, more generally, the ideology of visual culture across the political and urban landscapes. Assessment by two exams and a short interpretive paper. No interview required.

The lectures survey selected issues in the prehistory of the museum, such as collecting in classical antiquity through the Renaissance; the studiolo; the Kunstkammer; the birth of the 'modern' museum in the age of Enlightenment; the history of European and American museums in the 19th century as they emerged alongside the disciplines of archaeology and art history; museums in the 20th century and their expanding definition largely as a consequence of increased attention to modern and contemporary art and its rupture with tradition. The course will conclude with an examination of how museums are adapting to a rapidly changing world and more diverse audiences; how museums are affected by and harnessing technology such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence; how these and other developments are shaping the museum of the future.

Between the two world wars, in the wake of the 1918 victory, and at the apex of the country’s colonial expansion, Paris became a laboratory of modern culture. New visual and spatial strategies emerged, responding to the challenge of industry and using the resources of the luxury crafts. Architecture, interior design and urban planning went through major changes during these two decades, entertaining intense relationships with a conflict-ridden political scene, while Taylorism and Fordism reshaped the metropole’s factories. Cinema and fashion responded to the aspirations of the urban bourgeoisie, setting up the stage for modern dreams. At the same time, the mysteries and the myths of Paris were explored by photographers, and filmmakers, and discussed in the writings of Roger Caillois and Walter Benjamin. The course considers all these dimensions, assuming that the two world wars were intense periods of creativity, rather than parentheses - major artistic movements were born in response to the Union sacrée, and the Occupation of Paris during WWII left space for research and innovation.

This course will examine the development of art conservation in both theory and practice from its earliest manifestations to the current moment. An historical overview of the field will serve as background for a more detailed exploration of core issues in preservation and restoration. How does conservation change the appearance - and by extension, the meaning - of a work of art? How have the theoretical underpinnings of the discipline evolved, and what role do they play in practice today? And how has conservation responded to the enormous social, historical and intellectual changes of the last few years? Topics to be discussed include the roles of artist-restorer and architect-restorer in the rise of a discipline; the impact of science and scientific inquiry; cleaning controversies and the lure of positivist thinking; the development of ethical standards; decision-making in conservation; the challenges of modern and contemporary art; sustainability; and the expanding roles of the conservator. Readings will range from theoretical treatises to case studies of treatments, but no pre- requisite of scientific knowledge is required. The course is open to all art history, archaeology and conservation students, and it fulfills the conservation requirement for art history and archaeology students.

Artworks have often generated multiple –and conflicting – interpretations and a large and varied body of criticism. This course presents topics in historical interpretation, critical theory, art historical method and historiography through an innovative combination of lecture and seminar experiences. Through this course, students will be provided with the essential materials they need to further their own process of discovery and intellectual development.

These courses emphasize the study and conservation of both organic and inorganic materials found in art and archaeology from ancient to contemporary periods. The preparation, manufacture, and identification of the materials used in the construction and conservation of works of art are studied as are mechanisms of degradation and the physiochemical aspects of conservation treatments.

These courses emphasize the study and conservation of both organic and inorganic materials found in art and archaeology from ancient to contemporary periods. The preparation, manufacture, and identification of the materials used in the construction and conservation of works of art are studied as are mechanisms of degradation and the physiochemical aspects of conservation treatments.

This course introduces first-year conservation students to organic materials and the methods used to produce works of art, archaeological and ethnographic objects, and other historical artifacts as well as to aspects of their deteriorations and treatment histories.

This course introduces first-year conservation students to inorganic materials and the methods used to produce works of art, archaeological and ethnographic objects, and other historical artifacts as well as to aspects of their deteriorations and treatment histories.

These courses provide an introduction to instrumental methods of examination and analysis that find frequent use in the field of conservation. Equipment housed in both the Conservation Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art is utilized and made available to the students.

These courses provide an introduction to instrumental methods of examination and analysis that find frequent use in the field of conservation. Equipment housed in both the Conservation Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art is utilized and made available to the students.

This course introduces students to current practices in conservation, including examination and documentation, adhesion, consolidation, structural support, cleaning and compensation. Topics are presented as they relate to divergent specialties of conservation, including paintings, paper and objects.

This course introduces all relevant issues of the museum environment: temperature and relative humidity, gaseous and particulate pollutants, light, vibration, and biological attack. Guidelines for the proper storage, display and transport of art objects are reviewed and cost-benefit analysis and risk assessment, emergency preparedness and disaster response are exercised on selected case studies.

This course will examine the development of art conservation in both theory and practice from its earliest manifestations to the current moment. An historical overview of the field will serve as background for a more detailed exploration of core issues in preservation and restoration. How does conservation change the appearance - and by extension, the meaning - of a work of art? How have the theoretical underpinnings of the discipline evolved, and what role do they play in practice today? And how has conservation responded to the enormous social, historical and intellectual changes of the last few years? Topics to be discussed include the roles of artist-restorer and architect-restorer in the rise of a discipline; the impact of science and scientific inquiry; cleaning controversies and the lure of positivist thinking; the development of ethical standards; decision-making in conservation; the challenges of modern and contemporary art; sustainability; and the expanding roles of the conservator. Readings will range from theoretical treatises to case studies of treatments, but no pre- requisite of scientific knowledge is required. The course is open to all art history, archaeology and conservation students, and it fulfills the conservation requirement for art history and archaeology students.

This course provides a foundation in the theory and practice of image-based documentation, focusing primarily on techniques which use DSLR cameras. Taught as a combination of lectures and hands-on sessions, weekly sessions will cover the following topics: documentation theory, standard visible light imaging, multiband imaging, reflectance transformation imaging, photogrammetry, micro-imaging, videography and data management. Deliverables will include a mixture of small technique-specific assignments and a broader outreach project.

In the course of the semester, each student completes the consolidation, cleaning, filling, retouching, and varnishing of an Old Master painting drawn from Samuel H. Kress Collections in museums and universities across the United States. Examination, documentation of condition, and comparative study of other works by the same artist and school accompany the treatment. The student must provide a full report, including photographic records, other examination findings, and analytical results as indicated. The making of cross sections and their analysis is incorporated into the course in addition to imaging with X-ray radiography and Infrared Reflectography. Approaches to cleaning, compensation, and issues in connoisseurship relating to the particular painting are emphasized. This course will focus on treatments of damaged painted surfaces and will consider both canvas and solid supports including wood, metal, plastic, glass, and other substrates. A large part of the semester will be dedicated to consolidating and securing unstable paint films. Other topics covered will include surface cleaning, tear repair, and humidification treatments. In the course of the semester, students will gain familiarity with both historical and modern conservation materials, as well as related aesthetic and theoretical issues. This course is required of paintings conservation students, but open to students of all specialties. This course addresses various approaches to the conservation problems encountered with paintings on fabric and focuses primarily on treatments for the support itself, although consolidation of the preparation and paint layers, presented in Easel Paintings II, will be readdressed. The topics include methods for flattening distortions and buckling, tear repair, making inserts, strip lining and other types of edge reinforcement, the application of protective facing, stretching a lining canvas, removal and remounting of paintings on their stretchers or strainers, alternatives to relining. The conservation of modern and contemporary paintings requires a set of skills that are different from those learned in studying Old Master pictures. Students in this course will: learn how to examine 20th/21st-century paintings and to write condition reports and treatment proposals; recognize the problems that are common to this period; become familiar with the materials used to make these works and the range of options to consolidate, clean, fill and retouch them; understand the roles of the living artist in conservation and of the conservator in contemporary art; and learn about special problems such as color field paintings, oversized pictures, raw canvas, de-varnishing and condition problems arising from inherent vice and frequent handling. The students will visit private and museum conservation labs specializing in modern art and one of the major auction houses prior to a sale. Each student will be assigned a painting for treatment within the semester. Students will be required to complete the treatment of a painting, submit a condition and treatment report for the assigned artwork as well as a condition report for an artwork at auction. The class is held in the studio of Modern Art Conservation located in Chelsea.

Depending on the student’s previous experience, a treatment project will be chosen to build on existing skills in the examination, documentation and repair of historic book structures, and/or the creation of a new conservation binding. The project may consist of in-depth treatment of one single object, or stabilization of a group of items that present related conservation problems. The challenges inherent in the exhibition and loan of bound materials will be addressed in the context of the active programs at the Morgan Library & Museum. Students will be instructed in the design and specification of exhibition supports for books, and in the criteria used to evaluate loan requests and facilities reports in relation to the vulnerabilities of bound materials. Students will submit written reports of treatment together with supporting illustrative materials. A presentation at ANAGPIC or a professional organization is encouraged. A written project proposal must be approved by both faculty and supervising conservator prior to registration. The HISTORY OF BOOK STRUCTURES PRACTICUM is required.

Technical and aesthetic considerations of various methods in the conservation of bound works are considered within the context of the large collection setting. Treatment options, housing and storage are discussed in relation to examples from research library and archive collections, as well as examples treated in individual student projects. The interactions between the special collections book conservation laboratory, library public services, and the traditional library preservation activities of collection management and reformatting/digitization are given special emphasis. The student will carry out treatments of bound materials under the direction of CUL conservators. Treatments will be selected to enhance the student’s expertise as necessary. By the end of the course, the student should have completed at least one complex book treatment, such as a leather reback or board reattachment, a full-leather binding, washing, guarding and re-sewing and re-binding a textblock. The student will also gain experience in a range of treatments applied to the artifact in general library collections, and collection-level stabilization treatments such as leather consolidation, simple board re-attachment, and cloth case rebacks. Weekly discussions with the conservators will introduce the student to collection-wide re-housing, exhibition and imaging projects ongoing in the lab, as well as the conservator’s role in protecting collection items through all phases of use and storage within the research library. A presentation at the annual ANAGPIC meeting or a professional organization is encouraged. A written project proposal must be approved by both faculty and supervising conservator prior to registration. The HISTORY OF BOOK STRUCTURES PRACTICUM is required.

The student is assigned specific deteriorated objects related to their field of special interest. The student examines and records their condition and then recommends and performs courses of treatment. A review is made of published records of treatment of related works. Written reports of treatment together with supporting illustrative materials are submitted.

The student is assigned specific deteriorated objects related to their field of special interest. The student examines and records their condition and then recommends and performs courses of treatment. A review is made of published records of treatment of related works. Written reports of treatment together with supporting illustrative materials are submitted.

This course involves the instrumental and scientific analysis of materials of a specific nature. Emphasis is placed on research to develop new methods of examining, preserving, and restoring works of art exhibiting particular types of structural failure. The results lead to a publishable paper.

This course involves the instrumental and scientific analysis of materials of a specific nature. Emphasis is placed on research to develop new methods of examining, preserving, and restoring works of art exhibiting particular types of structural failure. The results lead to a publishable paper.

This colloquium examines the state of scholarship on Greek temple decoration, from the Archaic to the Hellenistic periods (ca. 800-31 BCE). Among the topics under discussion are the uses of images on temples, their context of display, their organization into programs, their different political and social functions, and their reception by the public.

Tapping into New York City’s unparalleled collections, this colloquium explores the history of medieval art in America. Key figures include J. P. Morgan, Henry Walters, G. Grey Barnard, William Randolph Hearst, Isabella Stewart Gardner, and Raymond Pitcairn. It will consider the various contexts that inspired and motivated these collectors (English Romanticism, the American Arts & Crafts movement, German Rundbogenstil revival...). Some weeks we will meet in public and private collections around New York; a day-trip to private collections in Philadelphia is also a possibility. Students will produce one short object-oriented paper, drawing from a museum’s archives, and one seminar-long paper.

Using the current exhibition Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina as a model, this graduate-level seminar course explores emerging modes of curatorial practice at The Met. This course will deconstruct and examine the process of developing Hear Me Now, a multi-year collaboration that was shaped by external input and expertise, decentralizing the museum as the authoritative voice. Guest lecturers will include museum staff as well as outside partners, and discussions will range from exhibition space and design, interpretation strategy, and research methodology to community engagement, museum hierarchies, and restorative practice. The course examines the ways in which this exhibition makes several key interventions and suggests a possible framework to rethink curatorial approaches and catalyze change in museum practice.

From the recent deliberate toppling of an ancient sculpture in the Vatican Museums by a man who wanted to see the pope, to objects transformed by the violence in Ukraine, a myriad of events can cause change to cultural heritage. More prosaically, drawings may exhibit the stain of time, which, depending on the eyes of the beholder, can have contradictory meanings. Environmental factors, war, social and artistic interventions, and the inherent vice of artist materials can all radically (and synergistically) alter an object’s appearance. This course will consider how “damage”—whether it be a scar that is proof of injury, something that alters an object’s status, or simply deterioration that may comport with an artist’s intentions—can serve as an archive of an object’s history, bearing evidence of its significance. The class will include lectures, discussions, and visits to museum collections in the New York City area to closely examine different types of objects and their condition to consider questions about conservation decision-making; the relationship between conservators, the objects in their care, and affiliated communities; and to raise awareness that some things are meant to change over time.

This course is an introduction to the historical and contemporary arts of Africa, ranging from ancient architecture, masquerades, and traditional sculpture to modern photography, recent digital works and multi-media installations. Special attention is given to key moments of contact between different societies within Africa and between Africa and the Americas and Europe, including histories of imperialism and anti-colonial revolutions. We will also consider the challenges and politics of what it means to decolonize Africanist art history.

A single artwork often combines multiple historicities. Religious belief has a cosmic time frame, different from the political time frame of dynastic subjecthood. The time frame of cultural belatedness is tied to collective memory, whereas that of modernity is tied to the present, the now. Under some circumstances, material entropy, with its biological time frame, contributes a historicity of its own. How do an artwork’s disparate historicities relate to each other? This is the question that we will explore together. The seminar, which will be organized on a workshop model, is open to students in any field of art history, architectural history, archaeology, or conservation. Seminar participants will be encouraged to develop research projects within their own fields.

Our understanding of the development of early Chinese painting is in the process of being transformed by an unending stream of archaeological discoveries. This seminar aims to connect the new archaeological evidence to the rich archive of eleventh-century and earlier textual evidence for the practice of painting between the third and the tenth century. Breaking with the usual organization of my seminars, students will be required to write one long research paper (15-20 pages) and give a single presentation of their research-in-progress. A reading knowledge of Chinese is a prerequisite for this course.

The perception of Islamic art as an aniconic art is long-established and pervasive. In the nineteenth century, the idea was canonized in Orientalist discourses on the relation between race and culture by the coining of the German term Bilderverbot (lit. Image Prohibition) to denote an antipathy to figurative images seen as characteristic of Semitic peoples, including both Jews and Arabs (qua Muslims). On the one hand, this assumed antipathy to figurative art is often said to have inspired the development of characteristic art forms: calligraphy, geometry and vegetal ornament (the ‘arabesque’). On the other, it is often said to have inspired historical acts of iconoclasm, even up to our own day. Perhaps not surprisingly, both the material and textual evidence suggest a more complex, nuanced and varied series of attitudes to the production or consumption of images, marked by regional and temporal variations. In addition, etic accounts of the relationship between Islam and image are characterized by striking inconsistencies and paradoxes – at various times, for example, Muslims have been depicted as both iconoclasts and idolaters. This colloquium will explore some of these paradoxes. It will consider the kinds of materials that might serve to construct a history (or histories) of attitudes to images and image-making in the Islamic world, and the difficulties inherent in such a project. Profiting from a recent proliferation of publications on aniconism and iconoclasm more generally, we will discuss such topics as the ontological status of images, their social function and material (in)stability, concepts of abstraction, and iconoclasm and modernity.

This seminar explores the history and representation of French colonial activity in the Americas, Asia, and Africa from the reign of Louis XIV to the invasion of Algiers (c. 1660-1830). It studies the formation and fall of state-sponsored corporations like the French East India Company, the Senegal Company, and the Mississippi Company, as well as entities and individuals involved in the transatlantic slave trade. It also examines the increasing reliance in eighteenth-century Europe on the production, extraction, exportation, and consumption of natural resources and commodities like sugar, mahogany, cotton, and indigo, not only for economic livelihood but also for the construction of what Simon Gikandi has called the “culture of taste:” a world of “civilized” European comportment and aesthetics that was fundamentally dependent on violent, dehumanizing practices of enslavement and human trafficking. In the second half of the semester, we will research largely unexplored links between plantation ownership and enslavement in France’s Caribbean colonies (most notably Saint Domingue/Haiti) and the production and consumption of art in metropolitan France, and we will work on a digital mapping project dedicated to revealing these links. Lastly, we will consider how museums have addressed or elided histories of slavery and colonialism in installations and exhibitions. Students will be required to produce a 15-20 page research paper or a creative project; reading knowledge of French is recommended but not required.

How did religious life in the capital and its port reflect or react to what was simultaneously occurring across the Roman Empire and at its frontiers? How and why were so many different deities integrated within Rome and Ostia during the high imperial period and Late Antiquity in various contexts and how did polytheists and monotheists coexist? In this seminar, we will engage in vibrant current debates about these questions, asking whether we are able to define categories such as “foreign,” “official,” “unofficial,” “elective” and “ancestral,” and evaluating their usefulness. We will delve into the complex archaeological, visual, epigraphic, and topographical evidence for religious choices and activities in Rome and Ostia at the local level during a period of intense change. The religious and cultural identities of the cities’ diverse residents will be considered, as well as the divine images they created, dedications they offered, and the buildings and spaces where they venerated gods and goddesses that represent myriad traditions. Examples include shrines for lares (household gods) in houses and at street corners, dedications to the woodland god Silvanus in Rome’s military camps, elaborate sanctuaries dedicated to Magna Mater, Isis, and Mithras, and the exceptionally well-preserved synagogue and Christian basilica at Ostia. Students will gain experience working with different types of archaeological, topographical, visual, and epigraphic evidence, and familiarity with excavation reports, topographical lexicons, epigraphic corpora, and seminal recent publications. Our study will also be contextualized within a broad framework as we draw careful comparisons to relevant material from sites across the Empire, east and west.

This seminar will explore art in Rome in the first quarter of the 16th century--from the election of the formidable Pope Julius II in 1503 to the horrific Sack of Rome by rampaging Imperial troops in 1527--using the attribute of "darkness" to probe the rich and varied artistic, literary and antiquarian production of the period. A frequently encountered term in contemporary source material (letters, poems, epigrams, treatises, diplomatic reports), "darkness" can be understood as an artistic style ("maniera oscura") associated with paintings by Raphael and his disciples; a metaphor of the shadow of death imprinted in funerary monuments and written epitaphs of the period; a quality of the shadows enveloping the looming ruins of antiquity and the rising colossus of New St. Peter's basilica; and a trope for evoking ignorance of the past that artists, humanists, poets, and scholars set out to dispel. Literal and metaphorical darkness will be our entree into the art and culture of Rome in the Renaissance.

The purpose of the Proseminar is to introduce students in the doctoral program to advanced research methods in the history of art. Because it is a dedicated course for the entering PhD student, it will serve to consolidate the cohort. It is taken during the first semester and is taught by a rotation of the Institute faculty. Emphasis is placed on the specific practices of art-historical analysis in relation to visual and textual interpretation. The class is structured around specific problems in the history of art rather than broad conceptual paradigms, with an emphasis on historical interpretation.

This course will consider how vernacular photography offers insight into the possibilities and limitations of the medium’s central relationship to black subjectivity. While the history of photography most often begins with a named photographer, considerations of vernacular photographs often start with the unknown or quotidian subject depicted. In the case of vernacular photography of the African Diaspora, interpretations depend heavily on discourses of race as they intersect with the images’ historically specific social uses and viewing conventions, their physical and tactile nature, and diverse networks of circulation. This course addresses a range of visual material including daguerreotypes, commercial studio portraits, family albums, identity photographs and lynching postcards. It will turn to a roster of innovative thinkers to remap the very ways photography and Black life are discussed. Readings by scholars including Tina Campt, Shawn Michelle Smith, Leigh Raiford, Christina Sharpe, Kevin Quashie, Tanya Sheehan, and Saidiya Hartman inform moments of close looking and reflection.

This course will take a monographic approach, focusing on the art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). Through a mix of lectures and discussions, we will look in depth at his brand of post-impressionism (taking seriously issues of spectacle, social class, and corporeal difference) and the scholarship it has generated since his death. Examining his exhibition history and his circle of friends (and foes) will also allow us to discuss art produced in Western Europe in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, against the backdrop of volatile politics in the wake of the Franco-Prussian war and the rise of eugenics. Requirements for this course will be full participation in discussion, select short response papers or presentations (to readings or art viewed in New York City galleries), and a final paper.

Images from the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) — from propaganda posters and anarchist films to Picasso’s Guernica — have long shaped how we perceive the conflict. Not only iconic images of the War itself, but its dominant visual languages — photomontage, abstraction mobilized to convey political messages, folk art imbued with ideological meanings, film stills recycled on posters — have informed how fratricidal conflicts in other parts of the world are viewed today. Indeed, the Spanish Civil War was the one of the first wars in history that was seen in the press as well as on the screen. To date, there is a rich and varied corpus of work focusing on the paintings, sculptures, photographs, posters, films, printed propaganda campaigns, and artistic events in Spain and beyond that document the ways in which the War was perceived at home and abroad. Written alongside this vast visual culture of war, are the chronicles, memoirs, poems, novels, and history books that have served as a compliment to these visual images. This seminar will consider how these images and visual technologies did not merely represent the conflict through documentary and visual evidence, but also helped to create communities able to perceive the events of the War through specific ideological, social, and political lenses. While this seminar takes the Spanish Civil War as its frame, the different visual technologies that were introduced in the 1930s extend well beyond this specific national conflict. These tools of meaning-making transformed how the War was seen and received in Spain and abroad. Students from a range of disciplines – Art History, History, Anthropology, Cinema Studies, Spanish and Portuguese, etc. – are invited to enroll in this seminar. Over the course of the semester students will identify a specific area of research and, whenever possible, make use of area collections to design original projects related to the visual (and material) culture of the Spanish Civil War.

In this course we will approach the vexed category of “global contemporary art” as it is shaped by histories of gender, racialization, nation, empire, and political economy. Rather than the smooth, frictionless functioning of “globalized” multinational capital, our course draws its inspiration from the Non-Aligned Movement and the internationalist politics of the so-called Third World as they were articulated in the second half of the twentieth century. We will pay special attention to the ways that the dynamics of gender and race both constrain and animate, in equal turns, the projects of solidarity and coalition building. Our inquiry will therefore focus on the shifting relationships between political commitments––feminism, anticolonial liberation, and internationalism––and an intellectual practice, art history. While we will study such theoretical frameworks as the historical “intimacies” of the four contents; alternative, multiple, and cosmopolitan modernisms (and their discontents); the challenges of the contemporary biennial; and the vagaries of “feminism” across the globe, we will treat works of art as theoretical objects in and of themselves. Students in the seminar will produce drafts in stages and participate in writing workshops, leading to a substantive research paper of approximately twenty pages.

This course is an introduction to the practical, professional, ethical, intellectual, and institutional responsibilities of being a curator in an art museum or other institution (rare book library, historical society) whose mission is the preservation, interpretation and exhibition of objects of artistic, cultural, and historical significance. Through sessions with curators, directors, conservators, and other museum professionals on site at institutions around the city (virtual if necessary) students will learn about pedagogical, intellectual and aesthetic frameworks for installing a permanent collection; shaping a collection through acquisitions (and de-accessioning); exhibition planning and design; conservation; collections management (storage: material and environmental concerns); digital platforms and print publications; governance and oversight (including conflict of interest); provenance; audience engagement; and the role of curators as teachers within the museum context. The impact on curatorial practice of current theoretical debates about revising the art historical canon will be considered. Readings will be assigned each week. Class attendance and participation in discussion are essential. Assignments include written reviews of an exhibition and of a permanent collection installation, writing sample wall labels and gallery didactics, and as a final project, the presentation (oral and written) of a full-scale exhibition proposal following a rubric. This class is meant to be part of the growing roster of classes at the Institute that will form a “museum history – curatorial studies” track for MA and PhD students.

Indigenous perspectives and culturally specific protocols about their art and creative expressions do not always align with long-standing colonial institutional practices of collecting, curating, or presenting Native American art. This seminar-style course is designed as a deeper dive into better understandings about Indigenous arts and creative sovereignty - nations and peoples who do not view museum collections and cultural materials as “objects or things,” but as ancestors, relatives, and representatives of kinship systems and ties to homelands. Student colleagues will be responsible for two presentations on course readings, one lecture response, and one exhibition proposal and presentation.

Attention spans are on the decline, as are our memories. We are flooded by images presented on digital platforms designed to enhance delivery of an unending cascade of visual content. The times call out for principled resistance, and also some reconsideration of the values we associate with slowness and speed. In this course we approach works of art as invitations to slow looking, in order to cultivate attuned and independent thinking. The course will include visits to the Met and the Frick to do slow looking in person. Besides learning a protocol for extended observation, students will receive intensive training in analytical methods. How do we pass from a series of observations to a set of questions, and then go about exploring those questions? Students will engage in discussion of works of art and write frequent short writing assignments. We will also read essays that address questions of visual attention, and others that exemplify the art of slow looking, anatomizing them in order to learn from them. Students will get used to spending one or two hours looking at a single work of art, writing logs of their time spent doing so. They will also write analyses (“X-rays”) of the readings. They will also develop questions about a given work that will serve to lead group discussion on our site visits. Finally, they will write a paper of 15-20 pages focused on one of the works, drawing on the materials prepared by all the students throughout the term concerning that work. Grading: class participation (20%), logs (10%), X-rays (20%), questions for discussion and leading discussion (15%), paper (35%).

On occasion, a student’s particular interest may not be fully represented by the course offerings or is of such a personal nature that a course is just not available. In these cases, the student, in consultation with the Chair, can develop his or her own independent study course, focusing either on their area of specialization in conservation or hostory of art and archaeology. Individualized Instruction courses must be approved prior to registration. A course number will be assigned during the registration period.

On occasion, a student’s particular interest may not be fully represented by the course offerings or is of such a personal nature that a course is just not available. In these cases, the student, in consultation with the Chair, can develop his or her own independent study course, focusing either on their area of specialization in conservation or hostory of art and archaeology. Individualized Instruction courses must be approved prior to registration. A course number will be assigned during the registration period.

On occasion, a student’s particular interest may not be fully represented by the course offerings or is of such a personal nature that a course is just not available. In these cases, the student, in consultation with the Chair, can develop his or her own independent study course, focusing either on their area of specialization in conservation or hostory of art and archaeology. Individualized Instruction courses must be approved prior to registration. A course number will be assigned during the registration period.

The student will, in consultation with the Faculty Advisor, conduct research and write a scholarly Master’s Thesis on a specific topic within art history or archaeology. The Thesis will follow the outline proposed and approved in the previous semester. The student will gain experience with graduate-level research and the writing of a paper of publishable quality (9,000 word limit).

In consultation with their Faculty Advisor, the student will prepare for their oral and written exams related to a specific topic within art history or archaeology that is based upon the approved prospectus. The student will complete these final exams before earning their Master's of Philosophy.

In consultation with their Faculty Advisor, the student will conduct research and write a dissertation on a specific topic within art history or archaeology that is based upon the approved prospectus. The student will gain experience with graduate-level research and the writing of a book-length manuscript of publishable quality.