Department of Art History at Harvard

Department of Art History at Harvard
Name	Department of Art History at Harvard
Established	19th century
Type	Academic Department
Parent	Harvard University
Location	Cambridge, Massachusetts

Contents

Department of Art History at Harvard The Department of Art History at Harvard traces its origins within Harvard University and maintains interdisciplinary connections across Fogg Museum, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard Art Museums, and adjacent centers such as the Center for European Studies and the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. Its faculty and programs intersect with collections and archives at institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Gallery of Art (United States), and the Getty Research Institute.

History

Harvard's art-historical teaching grew alongside nineteenth-century expansions at Harvard University and the founding of the Fogg Museum under figures associated with the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, and patrons like Isabella Stewart Gardner, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Charles Lang Freer, and collectors connected to the American Antiquarian Society. The department evolved through scholarly exchanges with European centers such as the École du Louvre, the Courtauld Institute of Art, the Institut national d'histoire de l'art, and the Warburg Institute, while American collaborations included the Princeton University Art Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago. During the twentieth century, appointments and visiting positions linked Harvard to movements around Cubism, Futurism, Dada, Abstract Expressionism, and debates involving scholars who worked with archives from the Library of Congress, the British Museum, and the Vatican Library. Key moments involved exhibits and research tied to exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, the Hermitage Museum, and retrospective projects related to artists such as Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Jackson Pollock.

The department offers undergraduate concentrations and graduate degrees that draw on curricular links with the Department of History of Art, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Harvard Divinity School, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and programs at the Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School. Students pursue coursework covering periods connected to the Italian Renaissance, Baroque, French Impressionism, German Romanticism, Spanish Golden Age, Ottoman art, Mughal painting, Song dynasty, Heian period, and modern movements such as Surrealism and Pop Art. Cross-registration enables seminars with faculty from the Harris School of Public Policy—collaborations with museums like the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and the Prado Museum inform practicum courses in curatorial practice, provenance research, conservation ethics, and exhibition histories associated with awards and fellowships including the MacArthur Fellowship, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Student groups link undergraduates and graduates with organizations such as the Harvard Art Museums Student Committee, the Harvard Undergraduate Art Society, and collaborations with the Harvard Museum of Natural History for public programming and internships at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Peabody Essex Museum. Students organize conferences with peers from Yale University, Princeton University, Columbia University, Brown University, and international exchange programs with the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, the Sorbonne, and the Freie Universität Berlin. Career paths include museum work at the National Gallery (London), gallery practice in districts like Chelsea, Manhattan, academic posts at institutions including the Courtauld Institute of Art, publishing with houses such as Thames & Hudson and Phaidon Press, and conservation fellowships supported by the Getty Foundation.