Art History / Arts Management

Curriculum

Course Sequencing of Art History/ Arts Management Major Requirements

The Major in Art History/ Arts Management requires 48 units. After successfully completing the Program at USF students earn a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Art History/ Arts Management.

Art History/ Arts Management Minor Requirements

Art History/ Arts Management Major Course Descriptions

Art Appreciation provides an understanding of the methods of identifying, interpreting, and evaluating ideas in the creative arts. Areas covered include art's functions, the visual elements and principles of design, the styles of art, and the art object. Offered every semester.

Survey of Western Art History 1 introduces students chronologically to major themes, movements, and issues in Western Art History from prehistoric times through the Rococco (c. 1750). This course is ordinarily restricted to Visual Arts and Architecture/Community Design Majors, although other students may be admitted on a space-available basis with permission of the instructor.

Survey of Western Art History 2 studies the complex relationships between artists and the cultures in which they work, from 1750 to the present, exploring how art deals with questions of war and peace, social justice, religious belief, censorship, propaganda, gender, ethnic and social identity, and social critique.

The Imaginary Museum presents the great formal and historical issues of art history in western and world art traditions, with emphasis on the styles of objective accuracy, formal order, emotion, and fantasy.

Introduction to Museum Studies presents the historical development of museums, their collection, exhibition and education functions, administration, physical facilities, fundraising and ethics. Particular attention will be given to issues of diversity and multiculturalism; relationship of museums to changing populations and disciplinary trends; and examination of diverse types of collections. USF's Thacher Gallery serves as the laboratory for this course.

Arts for Educators is an interdisciplinary course for future elementary classroom teachers and students desiring an overview of the visual and performing arts. This course will offer students critical perspectives on arts education and hands-on experience in music, theater, dance/movement and visual art, with the goal of preparing them for reflective, culturally inclusive integration of the arts into the academic curriculum.

The Museum, Society and Culture course explores the role museums (especially history and natural history museums) play in society and the range of issues they face in conserving and presenting cultural and historical materials to the public. Topics include the politics of representation, collecting practices, intellectual property rights and repatriation, displaying culture, and working with diverse publics. Will include visits to area museums.

Visual Theology explores humanity's experience of the transcendent and sacred by learning to read the visual texts of religious myth, symbol, iconography and architecture from the Western and other traditions. Lecture course combines slide shows, reading and discussions, fieldtrips and creative projects.

Museum Studies 2 explores principles of collection development, management, conservation and use are taught in a special semester-long course using collections of Bay Area Museums.

Renaissance Art is an upper-division course that focuses on European art and visual culture, circa 14001600, with an emphasis on the visual traditions that flourished in the most influential centers of artistic production in the Renaissance, especially Italy, France, Germany and the Lowlands.

Baroque Art is an upper-division course that will examine special topics in the art and visual culture of seventeenth-century Europe, focusing on the traditions of painting, drawing, printmaking and architecture in Italy, Spain, the Lowlands and France.

Modern and Contemporary Art is an upper-division art history course that offers in-depth analysis of the meaning of modern and contemporary art in society. Through discussions and numerous field trips students explore a number of stylistic and thematic issues in contemporary art and their legacy from specific historical avant-garde movements. Among the topics of focus are the role of memory and loss, the body and sexuality, and race and ethnicity in a variety of visual art forms from the early twentieth-century to the present.

Women and Art is an upper-division course designed especially for majors in the Visual Arts and minors in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Students will examine the history of female artists from medieval times to the present in the Europe, Russia, and the United States, as well as in a contemporary global context. We will address how art institutions (history, criticism, education, exhibition forums) have accounted for--or failed to account for--women's artistic production.

Asian Art (CD) is a course that helps students build an understanding and appreciation of the visual arts of China, Japan, and India. Lectures illustrated with slides and museum visits.

African Art (CD) is an introductory class that helps students gain knowledge and appreciation of the plastic and kinetic arts of sub-Saharan Africa. Mythology, masking traditions, ritual and spirituality, gender and cultural issues of traditional and contemporary African cultures are examined through slide lectures, videos, and museum visits.

Art of the Americas is an upper division art history course focusing on the art made by the numerous and different peoples of North and South America, from antiquity to the present.

Filipino American Arts (CD) is a combined studio and cultural history course that offers a survey of Filipino American artistic production,looking at visual art, literature, music, and performance. The goal of the course is for students to develop their own artistic voice in response to histories of colonization, transnationalism, and globalization.

The Triumph of Impressionism provides an introduction to the most famous artistic movement in the history of art and one of the most important: Impressionism. It analyses how a group of passionate young men and women struggled for years to offer their own vision of art and planted the seeds of many 20th century art movements.

Art & Business/Professional Practice is a course where students learn the practical nuts and bolts business aspects of the art world through museum and gallery visits, curating of exhibitions,and presentations on finance, insurance, portfolio building, and grant writing from art professionals.

Internship: Fine Arts Museum  provides a supervised work experience in a Bay Area art museum designed to complement the theoretical, methodological and practical instruction received in the Art History/Arts Management major. Students will be placed with a supervisor in a field such as museum education, development, public relations, conservation, or other areas in order to gain direct experience they need to find the position in the art world most suited to their interests and abilities. Partner organizations include: the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (de Young and Legion of Honor), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of African Diaspora, and the Cartoon Art Museum, among others.

Internship: Commercial Gallery serves as an opportunity for students to develop patterns of professional behavior in the commercial art world setting. Students will be placed in a Bay Area art gallery where they will learn skills such as client interaction, cataloguing of works of art, shipping and insuring art, sales techniques, curating exhibitions, planning receptions, art fairs, and other public events, etc. Partner art galleries in San Francisco include: Franklin Bowles, Braunstein/Quay, Catharine Clark, Christopher Clark, Frey Norris, Haines Gallery, Hespe Gallery, Robert Koch, and Toomey Tourrell Fine Art.

Internship: Arts Non-Profit (SL)  places students in a non-profit arts organization where they learn the skills of community outreach, fund raising, and curating of exhibitions in an alternative arts setting. Partner organizations include: Creativity Explored, Intersection for the Arts, Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, New Langton Arts, and the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery.