Art History and Museum Studies, BA

The program provides lots of flexibility, often letting you choose what you’ll study from groups of related courses. Whatever courses you choose, you'll be immersed in various art forms: architecture, decorative arts, film, painting, performance art, photography, printmaking, and sculpture. You’ll also get hands-on experience creating art in an applied art course of your choice.

• Visual Literacy: identifying and understanding works of art and stylistic trends in major genres, periods, and cultural traditions of visual expression.
• Art in Context: appreciating the social, historical, and cultural contexts for both visual expression and responses to art, and facility in articulating these contexts orally and in writing.
• Critical and Creative Thinking: describing, researching, analyzing, and interpreting works of art, including the ability to understand and apply different art historical methods.

Your learning will not be confined to classrooms. We encourage you to take advantage of the internship and research opportunities available within our program. Our majors often intern at cultural institutions such as the Detroit Institute of Arts, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Cranbrook Museum of Art, the Henry Ford Museum and Estate, the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, the Smithsonian Institution, and other major arts institutions and galleries. You’ll also gain practical experience by creating an art exhibition on campus as the capstone of your major.

The minor or integrative studies concentration consists of 12 credits of upper-level courses you choose in art history and museum studies (ARTH).

Minors are not automatically granted. Once you finish the required courses, you must declare the minor on a form that you submit to the CASL Advising and Academic Success office.