The History of Art and Architecture concentration offers training in the historical interpretation and critical analysis of the visual arts and architecture. Encompassing material from the widest range of geographic and historical origins, art history is itself a multifaceted discipline embracing many different methods, perspectives and interests. Instruction in critical analysis is aided by the history of art and architecture department’s partnership with one of the world’s greatest teaching museums, comprising the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Sackler Museums, offering students a unique opportunity of first-hand study of original works of art in many media.
The graduate program in the Department of History of Art and Architecture offers a program of instruction that prepares students for teaching the history and theory of art at the college level, for museum work, and for independent research and writing. The department offers instruction in the following broad fields of the history of art and architecture: African, Greek and Roman, East Asian, Islamic, Latin American, Medieval/Byzantine, Modern (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries), Modern (twentieth century) and Contemporary, Renaissance and Baroque (fifteenth through eighteenth centuries), South Asian.