The VCUarts Department of Art History offers a BA degree and an MA with concentrations in Historical Studies and Museum Studies. Our faculty are active scholars and curators committed to preparing students for success in professional careers in museums and the arts or further graduate study. Housed in an art school within a large research university, the Department offers art history students the opportunity to interact with peers in both the visual arts and design and the humanities and social sciences.
Our programs combine rigorous classroom instruction with real-world experience through site visits and internships at museums and other institutions in Richmond and Washington, D.C. Our approach is broadly interdisciplinary, theoretically informed, and grounded in close historical and visual analysis. We seek to understand how past scholarship, as well as collection and exhibition practices, inform the study of art and visual culture today and in the future.
Like the faculty, our students pursue research projects that employ both traditional art-historical methods and new critical approaches. Faculty expertise is centered on global art and visual culture from 1700 to the present, with an emphasis on the modern and contemporary periods and on museum studies.
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