Art History is one of the principal avenues of inquiry into the psychology of visual expression. All human cultures, regardless of time and geography, have resorted to visual communication to express, explore, understand, and reveal their public as well as their private lives.
The BA in Art History provides students with the practical, conceptual and methodological skills required to understand this visual communication. The act of viewing is neither passive nor naïve, but rather an active and intentional series of choices meant to create meaning: it is an act of visual intelligence. The study of art history allows students to develop and mature their visual intelligence by focusing on both visual and verbal thinking.
Program Learning Outcomes
- Students will develop the writing competencies used in the discipline of art history: the ability to write both descriptively and analytically about works of visual art in a variety of media, to write critically about theoretical texts, and to write an independent research paper that develops and supports a thesis based on visual analysis and scholarly research.
- Students will be able to locate works of art and visual culture within the context of world art history and articulate the relationship between intended meaning/function and audience response in specific cultural and historical contexts.
- Students will be able to conduct advanced art historical research using the full range of scholarly resources.
While the Art Department encourages all students to take AP studio classes to prepare them for their studies at Chapman these courses are not considered equivalents to Chapman’s foundation studio art courses and therefore cannot be counted towards Chapman's BFA in Art.
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