The Department of Art History and Art offers opportunities to study art history, to participate in a broad range of studio offerings, to pursue state teacher certification in art education, and to engage in pre-professional museum training. The Bachelor of Arts degree is granted in art history and in pre-architecture, and the Bachelor of Science degree in art education. 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 in art education; 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 ArtThe 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

Upcoming Symposium | Canal to Cuyahoga: Everlasting Plastics in Context

Case Western Reserve University’s Department of Art History & Art, in collaboration with SPACES and the Cleveland Museum of Art and supported by the Department of English at CWRU, is proud to host a public symposium in celebration of the internationally recognized exhibition Everlasting Plastics. Co-curated by Tizziana Baldenbro,...

Upcoming GAMS tour of CMA galleries

GAMS will be hosting a tour of the Cleveland Museum of Art's medieval and Byzantine galleries this week, on Friday, September 22 at 5:00 PM. Please arrive a few minutes early and meet near the bamboo in the CMA atrium. The speakers will all be CWRU Art History graduate students....

Announcing the 49th Annual Cleveland Symposium

We are excited to announce that the much-anticipated 49th Annual Cleveland Symposium, hosted by the CWRU Art History Department and The Cleveland Museum of Art, is coming on Friday, October 13th to the CMA! This year's theme is "Surface Tension: Water, Waterways, and Art," with a keynote address from Dr....

A brunette, bespectacled woman holds a dainty conservation tool, a small slip of paper in a bag beneath her hands and blurred background.

Excavations at Samothrace | Graduate Student Summer Spotlight

This summer, third-year PhD students Clara Pinchbeck and Arielle Suskin were accepted to be part of the American Excavations at Samothrace team.   They traveled to Athens and scoped out the Acropolis, found Arielle’s favorite vase fragments in the Acropolis Museum, then landed in Samothrace, land of the ancient sanctuary and...

Dr. Elina Getsman, a white woman with dark hair, peeks out from between two large, stone statues, an impish grin on her face.

Elina Gertsman appointed Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities

Congratulations to Professor Elina Gertsman, newly appointed Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities! This title honors her extraordinary scholarship and the high esteem in which she is held nationally and internationally. All three of her monographs have received awards; and yet these are a mere fraction of her total...

A group of about 15 smiling medievalists gathered at Harkness Chapel in front of a projector image of the title of the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Successful First GAMS Meetup!

Students in the Graduate Association of Medieval Studies (GAMS) had a fantastic time at the first GAMS event of the semester last night—Pizza and Movie Night (with nothing less than Monty Python and the Holy Grail playing)! Lots of laughs and discussion among our medievalists, musicologists, and more. We're...

A bespectacled woman leans over a table with two amply matted small prints, a magnifying glass at her side.

Print Scholars Workshop | Graduate Student Summer Spotlight

In July PhD Candidate Jillian Kruse had the amazing opportunity to take part in the Association of Print Scholars Intaglio Printmaking Workshop for Early Career Curators and Scholars funded by the Getty Paper Project. Over the course of five days, participants learned about various intaglio printmaking methods and made their...

In a mixture of medieval calligraphic and modern digital font, the words "Graphic Design in the Middle Ages," annotated with red writing to suggest a graphic design mock-up of an illuminated manuscript.

Graphic Design in the Middle Ages | Congrats to Sam Truman!

Congratulations to Sam Truman on the opening of the exhibition Graphic Design in the Middle Ages (https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/manuscript_design/)! The show explores the role of graphic design in the making of medieval manuscripts and considers how visual elements guided the ways readers experienced their books. Sam contributed to the exhibition under the...