• Works of art are examined in relation to the philosophical, social, political, and economic contexts in which they were produced.
  • Slide projections, videos, computer imagery, and field trips to museums and historic buildings help the student understand, more graphically, the importance of the visual arts to history and our own lives.
  • Art history majors have the opportunity to do internships for credit at the Philadelphia region's many art museums, galleries, and auction houses.
  • The Art History Program at Villanova provides students with the tools to understand, interpret, and evaluate art from the perspectives of different societies across time.
  • In doing so, the program encourages students to approach art not only as the production of cultural artifacts that record and reflect particular aspects of the human experience, but also as a dynamic force that has shaped, and continues to shape, the complex interaction of social, political and economic processes both in the past and in the present day.
  • A key strength of the program is its multidisciplinary focus. Building upon their own expertise in the history of art, our faculty members incorporate the latest theories and ideas from a variety of disciplines, such as literature, gender studies, and philosophy, in order to place art history in a broader scholarly context, and to emphasize the relevance of art history in contemporary academic research.
  • As a result, students engage a variety of approaches and methodologies, from iconography, formalism, and social history, to deconstruction, feminism, and visual culture.