So many colleges offer Art History as a major. I would like a school with a sophisticated program with a strong variety of Art History classes. I’m finding this hard to research. Any suggestions?
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Williams.
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I was going to say the very same thing.
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Thanks circuitrider. I should have mentioned I would love a mid-sized school.
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Your stats might be helpful so people can recommend schools that fit your profile.
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Smith
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Smith College! Smith has a strong Art History department, with many graduates going on to work at auction houses and museums in New York and around the world, not to mention professors, conservators and more. https://www.smith.edu/academics/art
The strength of the department dates back to at least the 1930’s (and most likely earlier), as it was one of the first colleges to have robust study abroad programs, with the art history program in Florence, Italy being one of the most notable. Another historic landmark for the art history department was Prof. Phyllis Lehman’s 30-year tenure as professor at Smith. Her work on the Nike of Samothrace, the Winged Victory (considered to be one of the masterpieces of Ancient Greek sculpture) was world-renowned, and helped Smith develop a global reputation as one of the top college art history departments.
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Good point, thank you. I’m new at this. Looking ideally at 4K-8K, but I would consider a little smaller and larger if the program was strong enough.
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Alas I am lacking a major qualification to get into Smith. I’m a guy.
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Smith Art History alum here - great program, amazing professors when I was there.
As a guy, you can look at other schools in the 5-college consortium and still take lots of classes at Smith. The consortium is pretty amazing, and as interconnected as you want it to be.
You might want to look into which colleges have great art collections and museums. I was really impressed by the museum at Bowdoin, for example, and wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out they were strong in art history.
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What are your stats, and what can you afford? It’s difficult to offer useful suggestions without more information.
Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale - along with the much larger Berkeley and NYU - stand head and shoulders above the rest for placement into art history curatorial and faculty positions. (Admittedly, this is of much more importance for prospective PhD students.) These are all reaches for even the most qualified applicants, though, as are many of the other similarly sized schools with strong art history programs like Northwestern, JHU, Chicago, Brown, etc.
Case Western may be worth a look. A fairly solid art history department, and the admit rate (30%) isn’t too discouraging.
Three pieces of more specific advice:
[ul][li]Art history majors are a dime a dozen. A second major in business is often extremely helpful when applying to jobs in a museum, gallery, or auction house. [/li]
[li]If you’re interested in a particular region or time period (West Africa? Ancient Egypt? Mesoamerica? China? Europe?), you should poke around on each department’s website to see if relevant courses and languages are offered, especially if you have an interest in pursuing a PhD. [/li]
[*]If you’re interested in art conservation, consider one of the schools with a graduate program in conservation (NYU, UCLA, Delaware, Buffalo State), since extensive hands-on experience in conservation as an undergraduate (or after graduation) is crucial in graduate admissions. It is much more difficult to get into a conservation program than even the best art history PhD programs.[/ul]
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“What are your stats, and what can you afford?”
I was wondering the same thing. You should not take on ANY debt at all as a potential art history major.
I concur with the two posters above - art historian Sister Wendy (of BBC fame) took a vow of poverty, you shouldn’t.