Art History

This course develops skills which enhance our interpretation, appreciation, and enjoyment of paintings. Lectures combine in-depth visual analysis with art historical understanding, imparting students with the skills and confidence to engage critically and creatively with paintings from a range of eras and places. Students incorporate other visual arts (sculpture, drawing, installation art, for instance), where these have been relevant to methods and histories of painting, as well as modern and contemporary strategies of display and exhibition-making. The course focuses on histories of British art and art collections in Britain (especially public collections accessible to students, in Oxford or London), though the course gives students a rounded understanding of painting made in prominent art centers, especially across Britain, Western Europe, and the United States.

The course surveys the art and archaeology of ancient Greece from the Bronze Age (c. 3000-1100 B.C.) to the early Roman imperial period (1st century AD). The chronological sequence of lectures considers the physical remains of ancient Greek life and society, including religion, domestic life, civic spaces, burial practices, social practices, the military, and interactions with other cultures.

This course surveys international visual art and architecture of the Enlightenment from the 17th through the 19th centuries, including specific Spanish examples. It compares movements within this period, examining Romanticism alongside Realism in art or historicism versus the modern city in architecture.

This course introduces art history both as a field of academic knowledge concerned with works of art (including painting, sculpture, and architecture) and as a discipline with a distinctive methodology, vocabulary and theoretical foundations. The course surveys the main trends in the artistic traditions of Europe and Asia paying special attention to cross-cultural comparative analysis (i.e. how the human body and landscape are represented in different artistic traditions). The course introduces the discipline's methodology and frameworks to appreciate broad comparative surveys of the major artistic movements in the history of art. Concepts such as idealism, realism, iconography, among others frame major art historical themes. 

This course focuses on not-for-profit arts organizations and related bodies in cultural creative industries. Topics covered include the evolution of the field, economic impact, value creation, the intrinsic and effectual structure, marketing, fundraising, and others. Students are introduced to a wide range of arts organizations and its projects, working as arts managers through lectures, readings and project research. In addition to understanding the organizational structures and functions of an arts organization, students have begun to develop a philosophy of management in the arts, a theoretical model for general management, and practical tools of its practice.

In this course, the art of the later Middle Ages from approximately 1300 to the 1530s is studied from a perspective where the art works are seen as manifestations of the visual culture of the period. Rather than approaching them as works of art in the conventional sense, the course focuses on the way the objects have made sense to their original beholders by virtue of the visual and material qualities that constitute their essential characteristics. It reviews medieval theories of vision, visuality, and materiality, and discusses the perception, reception, and use of images in various cultic settings, i.e., from Norwegian stave churches to convents on the European continent, as well as in secular contexts. The discussions concern art works of various media, with some extra attention given to manuscripts, relics/reliquaries, and polychrome sculpture. The course is taught as a combination of lectures and seminars which take place either at campus or in museum collections.