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
Year-end message from Elina Gertsman, the Acting Chair of Art History and Art
It was a true privilege to shepherd the department during this academic year. Despite all the complexities, we have accomplished astonishing things! Both our faculty members and our graduate students garnered extremely competitive fellowships and awards, organized international conferences, spoke at a broad variety of venues, published widely, and curated exhibitions. Our studio artists, in turn, exhibited their work across the United States. Our lecture series brought extraordinary scholars to campus; the Graduate Association for Medieval Studies and the Undergraduate Art History Club held a series of fabulous events; and the Cleveland Symposium, which celebrated its 50th anniversary, was a rousing success.
This year two new faculty members joined our ranks, and we are excited to welcome a new colleague, a specialist in medieval Japanese art, in the fall. Congratulations to our BA and MA graduates, and kudos to our PhD students who secured important curatorial appointments this year! In turn, Barney Taxel retired at the conclusion of this semester, and we are tremendously grateful for his years of service to the Art Studio program.
It was wonderful to celebrate everyone at our end-of-the-year party. I hope you have a magnificent conclusion to this academic year and a glorious summer!
The department is delighted to announce the publication of Scent and Sense in Medieval Material Culture, edited by Prof. Elina Gertsman. This collection of essays explores images and objects that take smells as their predicates, directing the inquiry on their tropological and often paradoxical meanings, and on their place in the medieval economy of remembrance and reflection. The volume, a guest-edited issue of Convivium, gathers essays drawing from several religious cultures of the global medieval world—Buddhist, Jewish, Christian (both western and eastern), Islamic—and offers a broad temporal span of several centuries. Among the featured authors are Sonya Rhie Mace, the George P. Bickford Curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art at the CMA, and Reed O’Mara, the department’s Mellon Fellow and doctoral student in medieval art.
Art History in Action: Erin Benay is at the forefront of redefining humanities education
The Department is delighted to celebrate the accomplishments of Prof. Erin Benay, Director of Undergraduate Studies and Distinguished Scholar in the Public Humanities--her work was profiled in a full feature in the Spring issue of THINK Magazine, CWRU's flagship publication. Pressing Matters, a program for visual literacy and self-advocacy founded...
Arielle Suskin awarded Research Grant from the Decorative Arts Trust
Congratulations to doctoral candidate Arielle Suskin, who has been awarded a Research Grant from the Decorative Arts Trust. The grant will support her summer research to travel to multiple U.S. museums as part of her dissertation research, which explores the social meanings of Roman bronze figural balsamaria, an ancient vessel...
The Joint Program / GAMS at the Medieval Congress
Members of the CWRU community took the International Congress on Medieval Studies by storm! Rebekkah Hart and Cecily Hughes co-organized a session “Scales of Devotion,” which featured a talk by Gerhard Lutz; Reed O’Mara led an online session on Jewish Women in the Middle Ages; Sarah Frisbie organized two sessions on medieval graffiti; and Prof. Gertsman put together two sessions on medieval materialities, one of which featured Zoe Appleby’s paper on Palermo’s lava stones. Tess Artis, Cecily, Sarah, and Rebekkah also presented papers in various sessions: on the CMA’s macabre double portrait, on sacrament niches, on the Beatus apocalypse, and on the seven sacraments fonts, respectively. Claudia Haines, Anna Farber, Rachel Sweeney as well as Sarah, Rebekkah, and Cecily helped prof. Gertsman run a day-long set of Immersive Realms HoloLens demos, brought to Kalamazoo by the fabulous Peter Gao and Anna Faxon. The gang was joined, at various times, by the alumni Laura Rybicki and Julia LaPlaca, and KSL’s digital preservation librarian and an avid member of GAMS Alyssa Pierce. And the famous book exhibit was greatly enriched by the presence of Nikki DeLuca’s freshly published book on shadows in medieval manuscripts!
Congratulations to Clara Pinchbeck, a fifth-year PhD candidate, has been selected as the Fall 2025 Graduate Research Intern in Antique, Byzantine, and Medieval Textiles at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston! Clara will collaborate with Elizabeth Dospěl Williams, Penny Vinik Chair of Fashion, Textiles, and Jewelry, to examine, catalogue,...
The Department of Art History and Art is delighted to announce the hire of Dr. Rachel Quist, who will be joining CWRU in the fall. Dr. Quist specializes in Buddhist visual culture of medieval Japan, and is especially interested in the interactions between Buddhist icons, their worshipers, and their natural environs. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Kansas with the dissertation “Forging Bonds through Icons and Ritual: Imperial Patronage of Daigoji,” which illuminates the centrality of sculptural icons within the complex interplay of medicinal rituals, imperial politics, and the cosmic worldview of premodern Japan.
Announcing Baker-Nord Faculty Fellowship!
Dr. Andrea Wolk Rager, Associate Professor in the Department of Art History & Art, has been awarded the Baker-Nord Institute Faculty Fellowship for the 2025-2026 academic year! She will be taking this teaching and service release in the spring 2026 semester to devote time to her new book manuscript, Canary in the Coal...
“Africa and Byzantium” (MMA, CMA), Prof. Betsy Bolman and Dr. Andrea Achi
Building on the excitement generated by the exhibition "Africa and Byzantium" (MMA, CMA), Prof. Betsy Bolman and Dr. Andrea Achi organized a paradigm-shifting Spring Symposium of the same name at Dumbarton Oaks. Held on April 25-26, 2025, the event was sold out. Bolman framed the conversation in terms of...
Distinguished Scholar in the Public Humanities
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmzQiScM-zw
Grad Awards Winners Announced
Art History students swept the grad awards this year! Cecily Hughes was named winner of this year’s Ruth Barber Moon Award, while Megan Alves and Claudia Haines were honored with Graduate Dean’s Instructional Excellence awards; Claire Sumner received the Pancoast; and Sarah Frisbie, Luke Hester, and Jillian Kruse received Friends of Art departmental awards. Congratulations to the winners!
Tracing Jewish Histories wins the MAA grant for Innovation in Community Building
Congratulations to our Mellon Fellow Reed O’Mara who, with her co-convenor Laura Feigen (the Courtauld), received the grant that will further support this international symposium that brings together fabulous speakers from all over the world and features a curatorial panel on the acquisition and display of Jewish material culture in museums.