[Application deadline: January 3]

For admission information, please go here.

The MA program in art history and museum studies includes the same broad requirements and objectives of the MA program in art history, along with a year-long museum studies course and two supervised museum internships.

These internships entail work on a specific project to be outlined by the student working with museum personnel, and approved by the departmental museum studies instructor. While most of these internships are undertaken at the Cleveland Museum of Art, with prior approval students may may conduct their internships instead at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland or at the Cleveland Clinic Art Program. The core course, language, and examination requirements are largely the same as for the MA in Art History. However, the museum internships substitute for the qualifying paper, two semesters of museum studies classes are required, and there are 9 (instead of 12) hours of electives required for the degree.

In addition to the regular graduate school application form, applicants to the graduate program in art history are required to submit GRE scores and copies of two research papers that they consider to represent their best work. Applicants for the MA should have a BA major or minor concentration in art history or a related humanities field and a minimum GPA of 3.5. All applicants whose native language is not English, or who have not received a degree from an English-speaking university, must take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL); the required minimum score is 100 if Internet-based.

The requirements include:

ARTH 495 Methodologies of Art History 3
ARTH 490A Visual Arts and Museums I 3
ARTH 490B Visual Arts and Museums: II 3
ARTH 491A Visual Arts and Museums: Internship 1
ARTH 491B Visual Arts and Museums: Internship 3
Six graduate courses at the 400 level or above, three of which must be seminars on the 500 level. These six courses must include one course each from four of the following five areas: world art, ancient, medieval, Renaissance/Baroque and modern/American/contemporary. Some courses are flexible: for example, ARTH 357/457 (Medieval Wonders: Monuments from Across the Globe) can be used to satisfy either medieval or world requirement, but not both. Please see your instructor and the DGS to determine under which category any given such course should be counted. 18
A reading knowledge of one foreign language (normally French, German, or Italian)
Total Units 31

Students must successfully complete ARTH 490 A&B before enrolling in ARTH 491 A&B.

Through ARTH 491A, students will complete an internship that introduces them to the major activities, duties, and responsibilities of a designated division of the museum (including curatorial, education, collections management, conservation, and/or the library). During this period students will also develop a major project, to be completed during the tenure of ARTH491B. This project should be intellectually challenging, equivalent academically to the MA paper, and ideally will allow the student to interact with other divisions of the museum. During this second semester of the internship sequence, the student may elect to have a faculty supervisor other than the museum studies instructor.