The Department of Art History and Art offers opportunities to study art history, to participate in a broad range of studio offerings and to engage in pre-professional museum training. The Bachelor of Arts degree is granted in art history and in pre-architecture. In addition, the department offers graduate programs leading to the degrees of Master of Arts in art history, in art history and museum studies; and the Doctor of Philosophy in art history.
All art programs are considerably enhanced by close cooperation with and access to the facilities of cultural institutions located in University Circle, in particular The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Cleveland Institute of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland.
The Cleveland Museum of Art/CWRU Art History Program has been in existence since 1967. The museum’s curators serve as adjunct faculty, and graduate research projects under their direction often result in exhibitions and publications. The museum Studies course and internships provide experience in curatorial practices, connoisseurship, conservation, design, and museum education, and the program has a history of producing leaders in the museum field. Graduate students are exposed to both traditional and newer theoretically based art historical approaches in classes taught by faculty renowned for their expertise in a diversity of fields.
News
50th Annual Cleveland Symposium: Moments, Intervals, Epochs
Please join us for the 50th Annual Cleveland Symposium, Moments, Intervals, Epochs: Time in the Visual Arts. This year’s symposium will take place at the Cleveland Museum of Art Lecture Hall on Friday and Saturday, November 22-23, 2024! Both as a physical dimension and a subjective...
Tracing Jewish Histories
Save the date for a two-day symposium titled Tracing Jewish Histories: The Afterlives of Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts, Judaica, and Architecture! Co-organized by Reed O’Mara and Laura Feigen, this symposium will take place in London at The Courtauld Institute of Art on May 19th and 20th. It will include scholars...
Congratulations to Alex Kaczenski on joining LACMA!
We are delighted to announce that Alex Kaczenski, a doctoral candidate in medieval art, just started her new position as the Assistant Curator of European Painting and Sculpture at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art! Alex joins LACMA from the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, where she has been a curatorial assistant. LACMA’s vast European painting collection comprises works ranging from the twelfth to the early twentieth century. In her role as Assistant Curator of European Painting and Sculpture, Alex will be responsible for collection research and development through exhibitions, publications, and acquisitions.
Cosmic Ecologies Podcast released!
What divides the animal and the human? Do animals form families? What do images of animals in Hebrew manuscripts signify? Consider these questions and more in this episode of the Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast, sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America and produced by Jonathan Correa-Reyes, Logan Quigley, Will Beattie, Reed O’Mara, and Loren Lee. This episode features Elina Gertsman, David Shyovitz, Julie A. Harris, Sara Offenberg, and Beth Berkowitz in conversation with Reed. Click on the link to hear the episode on the Multicultural Middle Ages website or click here for the direct link on the podcast’s RSS feed.
Medieval Book Club Meeting: October 29!
Join us for our next book club meeting of the year to discuss the fabulous Laurus (Lavr), a tale of a young healer's journey towards Jerusalem through pestilence-ridden Europe, across temporal expanses and vast geographies. Redolent of medieval Russian folklore, the story explores questions of faith and loss, framed...
Doctoral Candidate Arielle Suskin participated in the American Numismatic Society’s Eric P. Newman Graduate Seminar in Numismatics
This summer, doctoral candidate Arielle Suskin participated in the American Numismatic Society's Eric P. Newman Graduate Seminar in Numismatics. Arielle researched a fascinating series of coins minted by leaders of the First Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire (66-73 CE), which use agricultural imagery associated with the Jewish harvest...
Joint program profiled in Cleveland Art
The joint program’s exciting projects have been highlighted in the museum’s members’ magazine. Read more here on the current and upcoming exhibitions and the Mellon short-term fellows program!
Recently, PhD candidates in medieval art Sam Truman and Reed O’Mara attended the opening of Lumen: The Art and Science of Light at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles! This expansive show explores the role of light in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam across the long Middle Ages. Sam worked on the show and the accompanying catalogue when she was an intern in the Getty’s medieval manuscripts department—the very same department where Reed finds herself as an intern this year! The catalogue includes Prof. Gertsman’s essay on medieval concepts of darkness.
Join us for the talk co-sponsored by the Department of Art History & Art and the Expanding Horizons Initiative on September 25 at 5 PM. Dr. Scott D. Miller, a specialist in Burgundian art, will speak about visual and material culture of late medieval itinerant courts — a fantastic and fantastically understudied topic! Dr. Miller’s visit to CWRU is part of the EHI grant supporting Prof. Elina Gertsman’s work with the Interactive Commons that aims to build a set of immersive multisensory environments.