Students develop their specialized interests from a combination of individual mentoring and collaborative approaches to intellectual inquiry. The program offers a supportive environment committed to debate and experimentation applicable to a variety of career choices. Graduates typically regard their two years in the art history master's program as a formative period of intellectual growth and professional experience.

Our diverse faculty offers a constantly changing curriculum of seminar topics geared to highlight current research, and a strong foundation in critical historiography and contemporary critical theory. Students in our interdisciplinary program also take advantage of exciting course offerings in cultural anthropology, classics, history, a wide range of literature programs, ethnic studies, gender and women's studies, art practices, and new media.

Our intimate atmosphere offers exceptional opportunities to work with permanent faculty and distinguished art historians from other institutions through our Visiting Scholars program. This longstanding feature of our graduate curriculum brings four to six leading scholars to campus every year to present their current work in a graduate seminar, public lecture and informal events.

Areas of specialization include: Medieval art, Early Modern art and art theory,  Pre-Columbian art, Latin American art, Asian art, Native North American art, Modern art and architecture, Contemporary art and critical theory.