萨福克大学

Art embodies imagination, history, and the rich tapestry of cultures. Art history examines how images and monuments communicate and how they function in society: to teach us, move us, and exalt us. As an art history major, you'll gain access to other cultures, other eras, and other ways of thinking. You'll also get ready for your junior year abroad and for an entire lifetime of thinking and living with global and historical perspectives.

Art history majors develop a keen aesthetic sense plus excellent research, analytical, and communication skills—launching pads for many careers. Some art history majors go on to graduate school in architecture, museum studies, or law. Others pursue gallery and arts management, teaching, or nonprofit work. This major imparts a crucial combination of aesthetic appreciation and historical knowledge.

Our Thriving Artistic Community

Our city is your canvas. Home to world-famous museums, Boston is also architecturally rich and filled with influential buildings and monuments from Boston City Hall to the Massachusetts State House which will play a key role in your studies.

Suffolk's newly reimagined art and design facilities are a dynamic artistic training ground for fine artists, graphic designers, and illustrators. Our on-campus artistic space features traditional and electronic studios, a woodshop, workspaces for printing and lighting, an extensive arts library, and the Suffolk University Art Gallery.

Major Requirements: 11 courses, 39-40 credits

Students in this major must earn the BA.

Learning Goals & Objectives

Learning goals and objectives reflect the educational outcomes achieved by students through the completion of this program. These transferable skills prepare Suffolk students for success in the workplace, in graduate school, and in their local and global communities.

Learning Goals

Students will know/understand

The important roles that the visual arts have played in society.

Appropriate methods for analyzing works of visual art.

How learning experiences inside and outside the classroom are connected and interdependent.

Learning Objectives

Students will be able to...

Demonstrate awareness of the multiple purposes visual arts have played in different cultures and periods

GENRE: know the traditional aims and conventions of the major types or genres of work produced in the historical and regional contexts covered by the course (e.g. Renaissance status portraits, Gothic cathedrals); and articulate how a given work or monument sustains, transforms, or breaks those conventions in the pursuit of its particular aims

FORM/STYLE: thoroughly and accurately perceive the media, techniques, and formal elements of a given work (composition, texture, scale, etc.); use appropriate technical vocabulary for describing them (contrapposto, nave, painterly brushwork); and relate them to the contextual meaning/purpose and expressive content of the work

CONTEXT: relate works to the ideas and practices of their original contexts (social, cultural, political, religious, etc.); and account for how a given work sought to affect or influence the ideas and practices of its original context

Analyze works of art seen in person at local museums and galleries using course-acquired knowledge and skills