Program Goals

The Art History course of study prepares students for a range of trajectories, both in the vast global economy of the art world and countless other fields: design, journalism, law, finance, and a business landscape in which creative facility is essential. The program cultivates skills central to the discipline and crucial to navigating the contemporary world—critical discernment, deep reading, analytic writing, cultural fluency, and sustained attention. Even more, our students connect with a wider human history by engaging with our visual expressions, built environments, and vital philosophical traditions—the study of Art History prepares students to thrive in a technologically and socially interconnected world.

The curriculum is organized around seven key learning outcomes:

Knowledge: Students will become familiar in some depth with art, architecture, and sites from a range of regions and periods.

Analysis: Students will evaluate, develop, and apply a variety of approaches to analysis and interpretation. 

Research: Students will develop fluency with research methods and primary sources specific to Art Historical study as a vital component of interdisciplinary, humanistic inquiry.

Site: Students will interact with the built environment and related institutions beyond Georgetown as a way to understand the complexity of places & publics.

Context: Students will recognize the ways in which art/architecture/visual culture operates in larger social systems.

Communication: Students will engage with the traditional lexicon of the discipline of Art History, and become conversant with the rhetorical tools of the many fields that inflect it.

Material: Students will understand materials and methods in art production and their significance in circulation, reception, and preservation.