History of Art & Visual Culture

This is not a typical, old school art history course where Giorgio Vasari gets to decide for all time and all places the standards of beauty and what, exactly, qualifies as art. This is new art history. We use old school formal analysis combined with real time contextual analysis. This is where we analyze the who, what, when, where, and why of a cultural object.

Who made it and who was it made for? When was it made and what was happening around it? What impact did the work have in its time – and what impact does it have now? Where was it made? Did it move from its original location? And why was it made?

And these questions lead us to even bigger ones – How does art shape the way we live and feel? The way we experience the visual world around us? Has it shaped the past? What about the present? And can it mold the future?