Art History Graduate Overview

SAIC has long been distinguished by its innovative and extensive curriculum in modern and contemporary topics. Our Art History MA programs draw on the institution's setting in Chicago with its wealth of historic architecture, public sculpture, museums, libraries, cultural facilities, and lively gallery scene.

Art History Master's Degree Programs

Master of Arts in Modern and Contemporary Art History (MAAH)
Students in SAIC’s Master of Arts in Modern and Contemporary Art History program pursue research in a prestigious fine art school connected with a major American art museum. Art History students work with a large department of full-time faculty specializing in modern and contemporary art and design with a global focus, and challenge, debate and interpret the field.

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Dual Degree: Master of Arts in Modern and Contemporary Art History and Arts Administration and Policy (MAAAP)
The 3-year, 63 credit Dual Degree is a unique program designed to immerse students in both the history of art and arts administration, competitively positioning graduates for work in the areas they choose, from academia to curatorial positions and work in nonprofit organizations.

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The programs' curricula incorporates historical, theoretical, and critical perspectives on art, design, and contemporary visual cultures. Fifteen full-time faculty teach modern and contemporary art history from diverse scholarly perspectives in a global context. Graduate students in our Art History master's degree programs join a vibrant art/design school community engaged with contemporary visual practices. Our graduate students have gone on to be curators, professors, writers, critics, publishers, gallerists, arts administrators, and activists.

Visiting Scholars

The department supports an active research culture with frequent lectures by visiting scholars, critics, and curators. Most important of these is the annual Lifton Memorial Lecture and seminar that brings a significant figure engaged with modern and contemporary art to campus. Recent speakers have included Ming Tiampo, Adrienne Brown and Rashad Shabazz, Saloni Mathur, Hannah B Higgins and Deborah Willis. In addition, graduate students annually select an Art History End-of-Year Lecturer to speak every spring and have recently invited Amanda Boetzkes, Jessica L. Horton and Luis Castañeda, among many others. Across SAIC, contemporary artists give talks every week through studio departments and the Visiting Artists Program.

Thesis Abstracts

Each year, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago celebrates the culmination and closure of students' studies at the masters level. In studio areas, the celebration takes place in the form of the thesis exhibitions. The academic areas complement this with the publication of students' theses. The SAIC Thesis Repository contains theses for the MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History and the Dual Degree submitted since November 2013.

Course Listing

Title Catalog Instructor Schedule

Description

Art has been many things to many people. This class introduces students to the history of art and art-like things on Earth from prehistory to ca. 1800 CE. It covers canonical examples from older scholarship alongside works and contexts emerging in recent art histories. Students will learn to perform basic art historical analysis and research, and the course will prepare them to form personal art histories, applying such art histories to their own work. The course surveys historical art in a global scope, from the beginnings of known culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It introduces students to a range of interdisciplinary frameworks for parsing the production, reception, and conceptualization of art. And it challenges students to think about the relationships between past and present, highlighting how later artists and cultures have engaged earlier art and history. There is a small amount of required reading each week-on average about 20 pages. Written work includes weekly reading responses, two in-class quizzes, an annotated bibliography project, and a take-home final exam.

Class Number

1006

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

Lakeview - 1608

Description

Art has been many things to many people. This class introduces students to the history of art and art-like things on Earth from prehistory to ca. 1800 CE. It covers canonical examples from older scholarship alongside works and contexts emerging in recent art histories. Students will learn to perform basic art historical analysis and research, and the course will prepare them to form personal art histories, applying such art histories to their own work. The course surveys historical art in a global scope, from the beginnings of known culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It introduces students to a range of interdisciplinary frameworks for parsing the production, reception, and conceptualization of art. And it challenges students to think about the relationships between past and present, highlighting how later artists and cultures have engaged earlier art and history. There is a small amount of required reading each week-on average about 20 pages. Written work includes weekly reading responses, two in-class quizzes, an annotated bibliography project, and a take-home final exam.

Class Number

1009

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

MacLean 302

Description

Art has been many things to many people. This class introduces students to the history of art and art-like things on Earth from prehistory to ca. 1800 CE. It covers canonical examples from older scholarship alongside works and contexts emerging in recent art histories. Students will learn to perform basic art historical analysis and research, and the course will prepare them to form personal art histories, applying such art histories to their own work. The course surveys historical art in a global scope, from the beginnings of known culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It introduces students to a range of interdisciplinary frameworks for parsing the production, reception, and conceptualization of art. And it challenges students to think about the relationships between past and present, highlighting how later artists and cultures have engaged earlier art and history. There is a small amount of required reading each week-on average about 20 pages. Written work includes weekly reading responses, two in-class quizzes, an annotated bibliography project, and a take-home final exam.

Class Number

1010

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

MacLean 302

Description

This course surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues, as well as the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes that are reflected or addressed in the works of artists and architects. Note: ARTHI 1001 (or its equivalent) is recommended as a prerequisite for ARTHI 1002.

Class Number

1011

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

MacLean 302

Description

This course surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues, as well as the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes that are reflected or addressed in the works of artists and architects. Note: ARTHI 1001 (or its equivalent) is recommended as a prerequisite for ARTHI 1002.

Class Number

1013

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

Lakeview - 1608

Description

This course surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues, as well as the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes that are reflected or addressed in the works of artists and architects. Note: ARTHI 1001 (or its equivalent) is recommended as a prerequisite for ARTHI 1002.

Class Number

1014

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

MacLean 302

Description

This course surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues, as well as the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes that are reflected or addressed in the works of artists and architects. Note: ARTHI 1001 (or its equivalent) is recommended as a prerequisite for ARTHI 1002.

Class Number

1037

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

Lakeview - 1608

Description

In this course, students will learn the basics of film language, cover the evolution of various stylistic and ideological trends throughout the medium, and gain a core understanding of how to critically analyze film and other media forms from formal, historical, and cultural theoretical perspectives. While the specific films screened may vary, course screenings and readings generally cover the development of Hollywood and studio-based filmmaking practices, diasporic and exilic models of filmmaking, European New Waves, televisual practices of media making, and topics in new media. Students will complete quizzes and a comprehensive final exam to demonstrate their understanding of course terminology, concepts, and themes, as well as a number of short written analyses to exhibit their competency and skill in constructing original scholarly argumentation.

Class Number

1015

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

Lakeview - 1608

Description

This course plunges students into content and ideas that universities often leave until graduate school, as we consider the role played by the 'critical' in 'visual and critical studies.' For the past ten years, it has been referred to as 'a primer for the art world.' It will still, mostly, provide you with a working vocabulary and crash course as to bodies of knowledge integral to the study of visual culture. At the same time, to productively engage in a reflective critique of society and culture, it will consider 'texts' from as diverse and contemporaneous a group of scholars, theorists, critics, and cultural producers as possible, from both inside and outside the academic institution.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

1016

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Area of Study

Theory

Location

MacLean 920

Description

This course plunges students into content and ideas that universities often leave until graduate school, as we consider the role played by the 'critical' in 'visual and critical studies.' For the past ten years, it has been referred to as 'a primer for the art world.' It will still, mostly, provide you with a working vocabulary and crash course as to bodies of knowledge integral to the study of visual culture. At the same time, to productively engage in a reflective critique of society and culture, it will consider 'texts' from as diverse and contemporaneous a group of scholars, theorists, critics, and cultural producers as possible, from both inside and outside the academic institution.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

1064

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Area of Study

Theory

Location

MacLean 920

Description

This course surveys the history and production of clay and ceramics, from one of the earliest ceramic objects known, dating back some 20,000 years, to the present use of clay in contemporary art, design and craft. The course will take us through every continent and be looking at the use of ceramic in different cultures at different times though history. Attention will be given to the role clay and ceramic plays in our human development both as ritualistic, artistic and functional handmade and mass-produced objects. From ceramic in an ancient caves to NASA and the use of ceramic in space and everything in between.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

2348

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

280 Building Rm 120

Description

This course studies the medieval book in Europe and the visual arts crafted in medieval Paris as well as their connections to the global medieval world through exchange and gifting. The medieval cosmos in Islamic and European cultures, humans? relationship with the natural world, and artist?s practices of making will be studied as well as manuscripts, textiles, metal work, and more. Books in the medieval world include narratives of heroes, saints, love, magic, scientific knowledge, and documentation of artistic techniques. This course is Eurocentric however includes arts of Middle East and North Africa for a broader understanding of the medieval world. Coursework includes field trips to view Chicago's medieval manuscript and art collections at the Newberry and the Art Institute. Readings include works by Sharon Farmer, ?Surviving Poverty in Paris,? Edson and Savage-Smith, ?Medieval Views of the Cosmos,? Michael Camille, ?Nature of Gothic,? Madeline Caviness, ?Patron or Matron?,? Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair, ?Islamic Penmen and Painters,? and more. Coursework will vary but typically includes discussions, reading responses, in-class quizzes, short presentations and a research paper.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

2353

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Area of Study

Books and Publishing

Location

Lakeview - 206

Description

This course surveys the history of architecture and design, including furnishings, decorative arts and interiors, from the earliest settlements of the Neolithic Era until the onset of Neoclassicism in the late Eighteenth Century. Special attention is given to the developments that have remained most influential within the architecture and design of today, with particular emphasis on ancient Greece and Rome, Early Christian, Byzantine and early Islam, the European Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo cultures. Through extensive lectures and readings, special focus in this class is devoted to the art of the Greek temple, Roman civil engineering, the rise of monasticism in the early Middle Ages, early Byzantine and early Islamic religious design, pilgrimage and Romanesque church building, Gothic Europe and the age of cathedrals, Italian Renaissance architecture and the rise of Humanism, Baroque churches and papal patronage, French chateaux and absolute monarchy, and the origins of Modernism during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Students will complete a combination of in-class and take-home exams along with a final research paper on a topic chosen in consultation with the instructor.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

1017

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

MacLean 920

Description

This is an undergraduate survey of modernism and postmodernism in Latin America from the 1920s through the present. Topics will include national identity and 'anthropophagy' in the first wave of modernism in the region, debates over Surrealism and realism in the 1930s, the transition from 'concrete to 'neo-concrete' form and the link between architecture and developmentalism in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, conceptual art and politics in the 1960s and 1970s, and more recent sculptural, photographic, performance, and relational practices. Specific topics include the cosmopolitan avant-garde that appeared in Mexico at the start of the 1920s, the theorization of anthropofagia in Brazil and indigenismo in Peru, Cuba?s Grupo Minorista, Mexican muralism and surrealism, Joaquin Torres-Garcia?s introduction of abstraction to Uruguay and Argentina, links between art and architecture in Venezuelan and Brazilian developmentalism, the rise of kinetic and participatory approaches in the 1950s and 1960s, conceptual art as a response to the dictatorships of the 1960s and 1970s, Latinx and Chicanx actions and performance in the United States, the politics of memory in post-dictatorship/violence art in Chile and Colombia, persistent questions of borders and internationalism in contemporary approaches to ?relational aesthetics? in Central America and the Caribbean, and many other examples. This course requires weekly reading responses, two papers, and a final exam.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

1055

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

MacLean 707

Description

This course examines the emergence, growth and evolution of art by Asian Pacific Islander Americans throughout the twentieth century especially in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement that also spawned a genesis of Asian American identity, culture and activism to the late 1980?s during the apex of multiculturalism and the politics of representation to the transnationalism of the new millennium and beyond. Through readings, field trips, and film screenings, our class will consider the ongoing debate of what constitutes Asian American art by looking at artists including Isamu Noguchi, Roger Shimomura, Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, Maya Lin, Tseng Kwong Chi and others within these historical, cultural and political contexts to discuss how questions related to stereotype, cultural difference, gender politics, and identity construction affected and shaped its development and meaning. Course work will include in-class presentation, two research papers as well as a mid-term and final exam.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

2033

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

Lakeview - 1608

Description

This course introduces Korean visual culture by examining images and objects in their historical, social, religious, and philosophical contexts. It covers key examples of paintings, ceramics and Buddhist art from the Three Kingdoms period to the Choson dynasty, through Modern Korean art, This course helps students gain a comprehensive understanding of traditional Korean visual culture and its modern legacy.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

2037

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

MacLean 707

Description

This course introduces Japanese Art between the 17th to the 19th century, also known as the Edo period (1603-1868), when a variety of art forms and styles emerged. We will examine a selection of major styles and artistic practices, and their social and historical backgrounds, providing an introduction to Japanese aesthetics, techniques, and artists. Students will be able to become familiar with many key works and also gain some understanding on changing currents during the 250 years period. Examples of the art forms we will examine include those from the official painting schools, such as the Kano school, to the vibrant popular culture ukiyo-e (floating world pictures). Influences from China and the West that were absorbed by artists in a variety of ways will be considered. To give foundation, the first few classes will provide a broad overview of pictorial art in Japan from ancient times to the 16th century and study major artistic traditions. Course work will vary but typically includes two writing assignments and a final exam.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

1823

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

MacLean 620

Description

This course examines significant developments in European architecture, with regard to structure, function, and style, from the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century through the outbreak of World War I. Major architects and their works are dealt with in the context of pertinent practical, theoretical, and social issues, to assess the overall prominence of architecture in the period of emergent modernism in Europe.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

1018

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

MacLean 707

Description

This course examines the photographs made in response to the shaping influences of 19th and 20th century global cultures. Our understanding of the issues guiding visual history has been sensitized by iconic as well as lesser known photographs and it is those meaningful images that are addressed across the semester. Because photography has been transformed across its history as technology altered practice and practice altered how the medium was conceptualized, the study of social and intellectual history along side the making of imagery is central if the larger purposes of photography are to be grasped and shared.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

2159

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

MacLean 707

Description

This course discusses the development of photography as both an art and a tool, including its invention, the initial social reaction to the photograph, the careers of major photographers, movements, and commercial publishers. The interrelationships between photography, art, science, and society are emphasized.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

1043

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

Lakeview - 1608

Upcoming Admissions Events

Oct21

Graduate Portfolio Day provides the opportunity for prospective students to meet one-on-one with faculty, receive immediate feedback on their portfolios, and learn more about the curricula, faculty, and application procedures from a number of colleges. RSVP.

Take the Next Step

Dual Degree Admissions Information
MA Modern and Contemporary Art History Admissions Information

Visit the graduate admissions website or contact the graduate admissions office at 312.629.6100, 800.232.7242 or gradmiss@saic.edu.