Art history is the study of the visual world, both past and present. It looks closely at a wide array of images, objects, buildings, and sites in order to better understand human societies. Art history operates with the understanding that visual/material artifacts may speak more directly and deeply about a culture than its written record. Put another way, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then art history equips students to read it. This is called "visual literacy" and it is an invaluable skill in our increasingly visual world.
Not limited strictly to the so-called "fine arts," art history seeks to understand visual and material culture more broadly: from paintings and sculpture, to architecture and urban design; from films and photographs, to ceramics and textiles; from scientific illustration and political posters, to performance art and street graffiti. Through engaging closely with these and other forms of visual expression, students become adept practitioners of the following skills: visual analysis and interpretation, original research and careful argumentation, image-based thinking and communication, and clear and persuasive writing in a variety of modes.
Engaging visual approaches to learning and thinking, art history prepares a diverse student body for a variety of professional tracks. Graduates from this major go on to enjoy careers in the following fields: visual arts (e.g., art criticism, art appraisal and sales, art therapy, fashion, interior design, museums, and conservation), the humanities (e.g., grant writing, historic preservation, and philanthropy), media and marketing (e.g., advertising, film, journalism, radio, and television), K-12 and post-secondary education (e.g., teaching and administration), information science and collections management (e.g., libraries and archives in public, non-profit, and corporate contexts), and medicine and law, two fields that have long prized art history alumni for their analytical precision, skills at information mastery, and "right-brain/left-brain" balance. For these and other reasons, students of art history go on to enjoy higher job satisfaction and lower unemployment rates over the course of their working lives than peers in vocational tracks.
Because the discipline spans all eras of human production and expression, majors in art history are required to fulfill a variety of distribution requirements across geographic regions and historical eras. Likewise, because the discipline takes artistic processes seriously as sites of knowledge production, one studio art class is also required for the major.
Intake: Fall and Spring
Esperado Junho 2024
College of Liberal Arts
215 Johnston Hall,
101 Pleasant Street SE,
MINNEAPOLIS,
Minnesota,
55455, United States
Student are required to have a high school graduation
English Language Proficiency Requirements: TOEFL iBT – 79; IELTS Academic – 6.5; Pearson Test of Academic English (PTE Academic) – 59; Cambridge Assessment English (CAE) C1 Advanced – 180.
Application Deadline for Fall: For freshmen international students the deadlines are November 1 (early action 1 deadline), December 1 (early action 2 deadline) and January 1 (regular deadline)