A group of students and an instructor discuss a sculpture at the AIC
Art History, Theory, & Criticism

Graduate Overview

Art History Graduate Overview

SAIC has long been distinguished by its innovative and extensive curriculum in modern and contemporary topics. Our Art History MA programs draw on the institution's setting in Chicago with its wealth of historic architecture, public sculpture, museums, libraries, cultural facilities, and lively gallery scene.

Art History Master's Degree Programs

Master of Arts in Modern and Contemporary Art History (MAAH)
Students in SAIC’s Master of Arts in Modern and Contemporary Art History program pursue research in a prestigious fine art school connected with a major American art museum. Art History students work with a large department of full-time faculty specializing in modern and contemporary art and design with a global focus, and challenge, debate and interpret the field.

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Dual Degree: Master of Arts in Modern and Contemporary Art History and Arts Administration and Policy (MAAAP)
The 3-year, 63 credit Dual Degree is a unique program designed to immerse students in both the history of art and arts administration, competitively positioning graduates for work in the areas they choose, from academia to curatorial positions and work in nonprofit organizations.

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The programs' curricula incorporates historical, theoretical, and critical perspectives on art, design, and contemporary visual cultures. Fifteen full-time faculty teach modern and contemporary art history from diverse scholarly perspectives in a global context. Graduate students in our Art History master's degree programs join a vibrant art/design school community engaged with contemporary visual practices. Our graduate students have gone on to be curators, professors, writers, critics, publishers, gallerists, arts administrators, and activists.

Visiting Scholars

The department supports an active research culture with frequent lectures by visiting scholars, critics, and curators. Most important of these is the annual Lifton Memorial Lecture and seminar that brings a significant figure engaged with modern and contemporary art to campus. Recent speakers have included Ming Tiampo, Adrienne Brown and Rashad Shabazz, Saloni Mathur, Hannah B Higgins and Deborah Willis. In addition, graduate students annually select an Art History End-of-Year Lecturer to speak every spring and have recently invited Amanda Boetzkes, Jessica L. Horton and Luis Castañeda, among many others. Across SAIC, contemporary artists give talks every week through studio departments and the Visiting Artists Program.

Thesis Abstracts

Each year, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago celebrates the culmination and closure of students' studies at the masters level. In studio areas, the celebration takes place in the form of the thesis exhibitions. The academic areas complement this with the publication of students' theses. The SAIC Thesis Repository contains theses for the MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History and the Dual Degree submitted since November 2013.

Course Listing

Title Catalog Instructor Schedule

Description

Art has been many things to many people. This class introduces students to the history of art and art-like things on Earth from prehistory to ca. 1800 CE. It covers canonical examples from older scholarship alongside works and contexts emerging in recent art histories. Students will learn to perform basic art historical analysis and research, and the course will prepare them to form personal art histories, applying such art histories to their own work. The course surveys historical art in a global scope, from the beginnings of known culture to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It introduces students to a range of interdisciplinary frameworks for parsing the production, reception, and conceptualization of art. And it challenges students to think about the relationships between past and present, highlighting how later artists and cultures have engaged earlier art and history. There is a small amount of required reading each week-on average about 20 pages. Written work includes weekly reading responses, two in-class quizzes, an annotated bibliography project, and a take-home final exam.

Class Number

1269

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

Online

Description

This course surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues, as well as the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes that are reflected or addressed in the works of artists and architects. Note: ARTHI 1001 (or its equivalent) is recommended as a prerequisite for ARTHI 1002.

Class Number

1271

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

Online

Description

This course surveys developments in nineteenth and twentieth century art and architecture. Particular emphasis is placed on theoretical and critical issues, as well as the historical, intellectual, and socioeconomic changes that are reflected or addressed in the works of artists and architects. Note: ARTHI 1001 (or its equivalent) is recommended as a prerequisite for ARTHI 1002.

Class Number

1272

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

Online

Description

This course is a comprehensive survey of the history of furniture, including relevant information on residential architecture, the decorative arts and interior design, from the Neolithic Era until the Twenty-First Century. Special attention is given to the developments that have remained most influential within furniture design today, with particular emphasis on the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassical eras, revivalism in the Nineteenth Century, early Modernism in the Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau movements, Art Deco, the Bauhaus and the International Style, Mid-Century Modernism, Late Modernism and Postmodernism. Through extensive lectures and readings, special focus in this class is devoted to the relationships between furniture and societal customs throughout history, the rise of furniture?s status as a fine art during the Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassical periods, the influence of industrialization, mass production and new technologies and materials on furniture manufacturing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, furniture?s role in helping to create and define architectural space within interiors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the role of individual narratives in developing unique identities and meanings for furniture throughout history. Students will complete a series of in-class exams along with a final research assignment analyzing a single object chosen from the Art Institute?s furniture collection.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

1273

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

Online

Description

This course offers an historical survey of music as a sonic art form from the Futurists to the present day. Emphasis is placed on works that tune the performance environment, explore sound as sculpture, interact with the listener/viewer, and employ intermedia. Class discussions include topics such as basic psycho-acoustics, sound manipulation, conceptual art, installation techniques, and constructivist aesthetics.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

1096

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

Online

Description

This course takes a hemispheric approach that unites the Ancient Americas by following the trade routes that moved materials and goods including corn, turquoise, and gold, from the Arctic to Patagonia and connected this vast expanse of land. We start in 12000 BC with the migration of people to different parts of North, South, and Central America and end in 1492 with the arrival of Europeans. Along the way, we consider a diverse range of media, including architecture, basketry, ceramics, textiles, jewelry, painting, sculpture, architecture, and earthworks from across the ancient Americas. Underscoring modes of both continuity and change, we will also survey responses from contemporary artists whose work continues through lines to ancient art made before Conquest.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

1098

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

Online

Description

This course will begin with examples of Expressionist Cinema in the masterpieces of 1920s Germany, through to reiterations in the classic Hollywood Film Noirs of the 1940s and 1950s, followed by the reinventions of Neo-Noir and finally, the influence of these works on films throughout Europe and Asia. The class will focus on the aesthetics of Expressionism, one of the dominant art movements of the 20th century, as it appears in film, with special attention to lighting, composition and editing. Likewise, lectures and discussions will also focus on recurrent themes such as urbanization, human psychology, the impact of modernity and gender relations. Screenings and readings may vary, but typical works to be studied include: Nosferatu, Metropolis, Double Indemnity, Kiss Me Deadly, The Long Goodbye, Elevator to the Gallows and Infernal Affairs. Readings will help elucidate these screenings. Through close observation and discussion, students will develop basic skills for analyzing film. The legacy of Film Noir, tends to reappear whenever there is social chaos. Given our present world situation, these films remain as relevant today as ever. Students can expect to write two essay exams covering the assigned screenings and readings and a final research paper.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

1284

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Area of Study

Art/Design and Politics, Gender and Sexuality, Economic Inequality & Class

Location

MacLean 1307

Description

Greek chitons, Elizabethan farthingales, Regency bum rolls, Victorian crinolines, Art Deco bias: the fashionable European body shape has changed era by era, the lines of the body accentuated and distorted through constrictions and protrusions. In this course, you will research those changing ideals of beauty through paintings, drawings, fashion plates, periodicals, literature, satire, and extant garments and organize your research into foundational tools to support future learning and making. Through the research you will also engage with traditional methods and techniques for creating these silhouettes; techniques and skills as essential to the student interested in historical costume design as those creating worlds of science fiction and fantasy. These investigations into changing the shape of the human body will also spark discussion around new ideas in sculpture, object design, creative motion, and the mutability of body identity. Readings from noted fashion historians and theorists Caroline Evans, Linda Baumgarten, Valerie Steele and the Fashioning the Body exhibition catalogue will be read in parallel with essays from feminist theorists and texts exploring ideas of embodiment and performativity. Remote visits with historians, reenactors, and archives such as the Newberry Library’s special collection and the Art Institute’s Textile collection will offer a rare opportunity to examine the qualities and materials of objects and garments made in a time distinct from our own. Projects throughout the course will include reference journals, illustrated glossaries, annotated bibliographies, historical sewing technique samplers, and half-scale structural garments. For final projects students will produce a research paper and a costume for a historical figure or fantastical character replicating the forms of beauty past.

Prerequisites

Co Req Forms of Beauty Past: Students must enroll in ARTHI 3098 and FASH 3098

Class Number

1099

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Area of Study

Gender and Sexuality, Costume Design, Economic Inequality & Class

Location

Sullivan Center 705, Sullivan Center 706

Description

This course offers a survey of the history of manga (Japanese comics) from its premodern predecessors to the present. Beginning with narrative picture scrolls in the medieval period, it will touch on forms of humor and political cartooning in the 19th and early 20th centuries, before moving onto multi-page stories, serials, and standalone books within the serially paneled comics medium. Related developments in non-Japanese comics and media like film, animation, illustration, and painting will also be considered. Among the major artists to be considered in this course are: Hokusai, Tagawa Suiho, Tezuka Osamu, Tatsumi Yoshihiro, Shirato Sanpei, Tsuge Yoshiharu, Hagio Moto, Otomo Katsuhiro, Takahashi Rumiko, and Tagame Gengoro. Students will be required to complete weekly readings, including translated manga and historical/interpretive essays, in addition to occasional reading responses, a research paper, and a final exam.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

1274

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Area of Study

Books and Publishing, Comics and Graphic Novels, Illustration

Location

Online

Description

This class examines Buddhist art in India and Southeast Asia historically and conceptually from its early iconic representations to more recent works by contemporary artists who call themselves Buddhist or use Buddhist ideas in their work. We also question the use of the term 'Art' when used in a religious context.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

1275

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

MacLean 301

Description

This course explores the expression of social imagination in modern China, from the early 20th century to the present day, through the cinematic medium. Taking a selection of representative films and film criticism particular to the mainland, the course will survey constructions of social space throughout distinct historical periods. These include the mise-en-scene of the 1930s silver screen (Wu Yonggang?' The Goddess), Maoist revolutionary representation (Jiang Qing's model opera-ballets), as well as critical portrayals of globalization in the 21st century (Jia Zhangke's The World).

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

1283

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

MacLean 608

Description

Since the early 1960s, artists have increasingly experimented with alternative methods of disseminating their ideas, using books or records, occasionally collaborating in periodicals, and other uncategorized projects. Students investigate the increasing acceptability of such activities and discuss a broad variety of publishing, from guerrilla fly-posting through mail-art magazines to the exhibition-in-a-book, including the unconventional artists' bookwork. Examining both well-known examples and obscure occurrences, the course attempts to place alternative art publishing in a contemporary context.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

1276

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

MacLean 620

Description

Science fiction is cinema's most colorful genre, and is as old as cinema itself. This screening-and-lecture course will consider a range of classic science fiction features, from the campy to the hyper violent, the preposterous to the mystical. Frequently dismissed as formulaic, the science fiction film is in fact remarkably supple, allowing inventive directors to tweak its conventions for their own creative ends - to create existential drama, biting social satire, or simple psychological terror. Films will include Alien, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Fly, and Westworld.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

1278

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

MacLean 1307

Description

The issues of modern philosophy have been inseparable from critical aspects of social modernity, such as the issue of 'capitalism.' From the 18th Century Enlightenment and 1789 French Revolution to the social revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries, philosophers have radically interrogated problems of consciousness and subjectivity in terms of modern society, and have been concerned with possibilities for social transformation and emancipation. This course begins with the trajectory from Rousseau and Adam Smith to Kant and Hegel, proceeding to Marx and his followers Lukacs, Korsch and Althusser, and opposing accounts of revolutionary possibilities by Heidegger, Foucault and Adorno.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement

Class Number

1399

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

Online

Description

In this course we will examine the ecstasy, transgressions, and transformations that occurred largely around queer networks of artistic activity in the United States ca. 1970-99. Focusing on larger cities, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, and Minneapolis, we will look at an intermedial roster of often undersung or understudied painters, photographers, dancers, performers, conceptualists, fashion designers, and DJs who honed an aesthetic of excess that critiqued and opened up possibilities both within social conventions and the art world. While this class is not a history of disco, It is nonetheless rooted in the politics of the dancefloor, where friendship, movement, inclusion, and joy can become political expressions of freedom. Topics explored include glamour and celebrity as a mode of critique and celebration (Les Petit Bon Bons, the Miss General Idea Pageants, File Megazine), conceptual and performance gestures that trafficked in vernacular forms (Diana Ross translated through Julius Eastman, Arthur Russell), the voices of other voices in Lipysnka and Pinkietessa, alternative actions and spaces via performances and exhibitions in the storefront windows of Fiorucci and Mayfield Bleu, public performances by The Cockettes and The Whizz Kidz, space making with David Mancuso, Larry Levan, Frankie Knuckles, and Adrian Piper's Funk Lessons, and the politics of partying and friendship around the dance-floor. We will read excerpts and texts by and from Micah Salkind, Peter Shapiro, Deforrest Brown Jr., Giorgio Agamben, madison moore, Albert Goldman, Tim Lawrence, A.A. Bronson, Jose Esteban Munoz. Students will present on one reading or screening, do a midterm creative research project, and a final presentation with a 10 page paper.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement OR Graduate Student

Class Number

1285

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Area of Study

Art/Design and Politics, Gender and Sexuality, Economic Inequality & Class

Location

MacLean 816

Description

This course examines images of women and the work of women artists in India, engaging with broader topics in feminist and postcolonial theory. We will investigate indigenous responses to colonial and to contemporary critiques of the female form in Indian art, discuss the agency of women artists in the twentieth century, and examine how women artists interpreted the female form. This is an advanced undergraduate course that emphasizes research and writing. Artists discussed in this class include Amrita Sher-Gil, Nilima Sheik, Shazia Sikander, Mithu Sen and Pushpamala Students will submit two 3-5page papers and one final studio project. Students will also lead discussion on one of the readings assigned in class.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement OR Graduate Student

Class Number

1279

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

Online

Description

Between its incorporation in 1833 and the world's fair of 1933, Chicago was internationally the most important site for development of modern architecture. From the commercial buildings of Burnham and Root or Adler and Sullivan to the domestic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie School, Chicago was on the 'cutting edge.' This architectural 'century of progress' is explored through field trips and on-site lectures. Chicago and its suburbs are the class's 'museum.'

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement OR Graduate Student

Class Number

1289

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

Lakeview - 205

Description

This team taught 3 week summer intensive course examines the unique lives, art and garments which have contributed to fashion theory and practices of the past 200 years. Topics introduce style innovators and creators of dress and menswear, relating fashion to cultural influences, subcultures, sculpture, performance art, dance, textiles, interior design, merchandising, journalism and creative writing. Roundtable readings will generate daily discussion while weekly collaborative research projects will lead to group presentations and individually-written essays. Visits to museum exhibitions and studios will inspire responses. For 3 hours daily M-F for 3 weeks, students with diverse interests can gain knowledge of fashion arts history and contemporary fashion practices while strengthening skills in research, speaking and writing.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement OR Graduate Student

Class Number

1280

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

Lakeview - 202

Description

This team taught 3 week summer intensive course examines the unique lives, art and garments which have contributed to fashion theory and practices of the past 200 years. Topics introduce style innovators and creators of dress and menswear, relating fashion to cultural influences, subcultures, sculpture, performance art, dance, textiles, interior design, merchandising, journalism and creative writing. Roundtable readings will generate daily discussion while weekly collaborative research projects will lead to group presentations and individually-written essays. Visits to museum exhibitions and studios will inspire responses. For 3 hours daily M-F for 3 weeks, students with diverse interests can gain knowledge of fashion arts history and contemporary fashion practices while strengthening skills in research, speaking and writing.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement OR Graduate Student

Class Number

1280

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

Lakeview - 202

Description

Incorporating daily visits to the Art Institute of Chicago, this seminar will examine the history of European and American art from the 1870s to the twentieth century through the focused engagement with objects in the museum collections. Class time will be divided between classroom lectures, discussions of daily reading assignments, and museum visits. In all of these, students will be expected to take an active participatory role. Course topics will be determined in relation to the collections on view, but recurring questions will focus on materiality and display.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: Art History Survey Requirement OR Graduate Student

Class Number

1281

Credits

3

Department

Art History, Theory, and Criticism

Location

MacLean 920

Take the Next Step

Accepting Applications

Apply to SAIC's MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History program for fall 2024 admission. APPLY 

Dual Degree Admissions Information
MA Modern and Contemporary Art History Admissions Information

Visit the graduate admissions website or contact the graduate admissions office at 312.629.6100, 800.232.7242 or gradmiss@saic.edu.