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Welcome to the Website of the Art History Department
at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Located in one of the nation’s most celebrated urban universities, the department shares a deep commitment to the possibilities a city can bring to human culture— exemplified in the University’s Great Cities initiatives, and in our own emphasis on the history, theory, criticism and reimagination of the city of the past, present, and future. Granting bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees in Art History, and offering a certificate concentration at the graduate level in Museum Studies, the department provides a comprehensive program with a breadth of offerings in the global history of architecture, art, and the visual and built environments. We bring to bear a wide diversity of methods, theories, and areas of specialization. Our department has scholar-teachers in nearly every area found in the history of art, architecture, design, and the visual and special world. Our faculty write about contemporary painting and photography, about visual forms of mass culture, about designed objects, Renaissance sculptural programs, and the artistic culture of pre- and post-Revolutionary Paris, to name just a few of the ways we seek to deepen and stretch the discipline. But we study, write and teach the visual arts within that larger context of the global human environment—of cities and buildings, of monuments and ritual sites. We offer a rich collection of scholars committed to the design of the built environment, from Medieval Islamic cities to Renaissance churches, from the everyday vernaculars of Chicago’s neighborhoods to the most current controversies of architecture and urban design. We offer specialists who work in nearly every broad segment of the globe and nearly every historical period. Our faculty and students interact with each other and with the rich resources of the city itself—its profound architectural heritage, its superb museums (many of which are staffed by graduates of our programs), its grassroots organizations and its deep and unusual archives and libraries. We have close connections, as well, with the other educational institutions of the region: our students routinely study in seminars at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, just as theirs are regularly found in our classes. Our department is unusual in the range of publications our faculty and, increasingly, our students and alumni, have contributed not just to the histories of architecture and art, but to urbanism, theories of the avant-garde, popular visual culture, the design of atomic cities and sugar-plantation company towns, the genealogy of sprawl, the evolution of the walled European city, and the environments of Mayan and Inca civilization. Students have responded to this heterodoxy of approach and subject with an equally wide and adventurous sweep: writing about tropical-theme architecture in the tourism industry, theories of the avant-garde, performance practices, globalization and industrial design, modernism and the business of art, women photographers in the 19th century studio, post-Communist crises of representation in Romania, industrial design in postwar Turkey, and many other topics. Our graduates are found in notable universities throughout the world, in major museums, and in the gallery world as well; some are critics, some practicing artists, some are curators, librarians, and book editors. Although our faculty and students vary considerably in their methods and their subject areas, there are certain areas of concentration. There is, first of all, a heavy emphasis on the design of the built environment, whether a great Renaissance church or the everyday landscape of a suburban strip. There is also a major focus on the arts of the Americas involving everything from a program of sculpture in a Mayan ritual complex to the design of a computer monitor. Our faculty and students tend to work around the traditional distinctions between high culture and everyday life and think of the entire visual world as their subject. In fact, although we call ourselves a department of art history, it might be more accurate to describe what we do as the history, theory and criticism of visual culture and the designed environment. Our program is closely tied to the practice of architecture, art and urban planning. We have particularly strong ties to:
· The School of Art and Design and the School of Architecture, both in the College of Architecture and the Arts. In fact these studio programs supply the majority of students for our undergraduate courses. · The program in Urban Planning (which was in our College until 1994) · The City Design Center, a joint venture of our College, Architecture and the Arts, and the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs · The College’s exhibition space, Gallery 400, a significant contributor to the city’s gallery and art-space scene. · Hull-House Museum, which is on our campus and administered by our College. This has presented many interesting opportunities to deal with public history, cultural tourism, historic preservation and museum practices. In addition, our program has strong collaborative relations with museums and galleries, artists’ and architects’ groups, governmental agencies and other institutions all over the great city of Chicago. Notable among these connections: · The Museum Studies Program. This certificate program is open to advanced undergraduates and graduate students and involves course work as well as an internship with local area museums and arts groups. Its practical training is deepened by a growing body of coursework involving the theories and histories of the art museum and the larger social sphere, made all the more robust by the presence on our faculty of Lisa Yun Lee, Director of the Jane Addams-Hull House Museum , a published scholar on the social philosopher Adorno. · Adjunct faculty. Among the adjunct faculty who teach in our program are curators and administrators at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art and other institutions. · Funded internships. The department has worked to secure paid internships for its graduate students at institutions such as the Terra Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Spertus Museum and others. Much like Chicago itself, our department is a lively place, very open to change and to new possibilities. We're developing Initiatives in Museum Studies and Historic Preservation; new faculty are arriving, bringing their enthusiasm and expertise; new courses are being offered and new pedagogical techniques tested and honed; we’re finishing books, articles, dissertations, theses; and we’re beginning them as well—talking in the halls, meeting at museums, arguing in classrooms and passing our work back and forth for discussion and collaboration. We’re working with our colleagues in history and architecture, studio arts and performance. Join us. |
