About the Program

Housed in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate Program in the History of Art and Architecture is dedicated to training the next generation of art history professors and museum professionals in a rigorous PhD program that demands art-historical breadth and focused original research; the M.A. is awarded only “in process”; there is no terminal Masters degree.

Please note that the M.A. Program in Architectural History is an entirely separate, terminal degree in the School of Architecture and it requires separate application.

Faculty

Comprised of 23 tenured or tenure-track professors, the Art and Architectural History faculty is dedicated to teaching and advising graduate students while leading research in the field. Faculty members have been recent recipients of Guggenheim fellowships, CASVA senior fellowships, the Rome Prize of the American Academy in Rome, and fellowships at the Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies.

Faculty members have published no fewer than ten books in the past three years, and they have received a host of awards including the American Institute of Architects International Book Award, the National Historic Preservation book prize, the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award from the College Art Association, and the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award from the Society of Architectural Historians.

Resources

Our program is part of a world-class university with a comprehensive research library system and cutting edge digital technology initiatives. Students often take advantage of courses in other outstanding departments at the University, such as History, Religious Studies, Politics, and English, to name a few. The Fine Arts Library and Alderman Library are excellent research resources, and the Albert Small Special Collections Library houses a major collection of manuscripts, incunabula, American literature, and other rare materials. The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities is one of several centers offering advanced research opportunities to our students.

Fellowships & Financial Assistance

In addition to the five-year fellowships being offered to all incoming students beginning in fall 2012, students are eligible for an array of additional resources. Each year the department nominates Ph.D. applicants for the Jefferson Scholars Fellowship, a University-wide fellowship program. The Carl H. and Martha S. Lindner Center for Art History provides significant financial resources to support student travel for research and language study, as well as the publication of research results.

Alumni

Our students have received nationally competitive residential fellowships such as the Chester Dale Fellowship of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery, the Kress Institutional Fellowship at the Kunsthistoriches Institut in Florence and the Institut national d'histoire de l'art in Paris, and the Rome Prize of the American Academy in Rome.  Their research has been supported by Fulbright Fellowships, the Luce/American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, the CLIR/Mellon Fellowship for Dissertation Research in Original Sources, and numerous others. For more information about our recent graduates, see Current Students.

Alumni teach at such institutions as Tufts University, the University of Georgia, Goucher College, Hood College, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Roger Williams University, Wake Forest University and Bradley University. Many graduates have made their careers in museums including the Phillips Collection, the Corcoran Museum, and the National Gallery all in Washington, D.C.; the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Museum; the Princeton University Art Museum, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond; the Cloisters in New York City; and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Others have worked at the Museum of Modern Art, Cooper-Hewitt and Colonial Williamsburg.

Contact

Please contact Professor Douglas Fordham, Director of Graduate Studies, if you have questions or would like further information about our program.