Departmental Facilities

The M.A. and Ph.D. programs in Art History offer advanced training in the study of visual and material culture from the Middle Ages to the present. The Department is strongly committed to the training of graduate students in a variety of approaches, methodologies, and issues including the study of art, science and technology; gender, class and society; material culture and object-based analysis; museums, collecting and cultural policy; word and image studies, and post-colonial analysis.

The Department of Art History and Art Conservation, offers, at the graduate level, in addition to the Ph.D. and the M.A. in Art History, the M.A.C. in Art Conservation. Recognizing the increasing need for art historians to know more about the history of technique, restoration, and the relation of conservation to art history, the Department has developed a number of advanced courses in the area of interaction between conservation and art history. It is uniquely equipped to do so with the art conservation program and its laboratories on campus and with several art historians and conservators actively doing research in the area. Ph.D. students interested in the overlap between the two disciplines have the option of carrying out a Ph.D. in Art History focusing on the field, Studies in Art History and Art Conservation. The interaction between art history and the museum is also addressed in advanced courses in the Department, which offers course credit to graduate students in art history for a practicum for M.A. students at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and a directed research program for Ph.D. students in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Liaison is also maintained with other Departments in the Humanities, particularly Classics, English, History, the Languages, Gender Studies, and Cultural Studies, so that graduate students may take additional courses in such fields if needed. In the Sciences, interdepartmental liaison is maintained particularly with Chemistry and Physics, which are of interest to the art conservation program.

The Art Library located in the Stauffer Library comprises some 60,000 items (including exhibition catalogues) on all aspects of art history and on art technology, restoration, conservation and exhibition, supplemented by microfiche and microfilm facilities. The Department holds some 400,000 images of architecture, painting and sculpture, art technology, restoration, and conservation, in digital and traditional formats. Vast digital collections of texts and images are also available through the Queen's libraries. Graduate students also have access to the computers, printers, scanners, and software necessary for textual and visual research in the Winifred Ross Multimedia Room. Extensive Canadian archival material on art and architecture is also available elsewhere in Stauffer Library and the University Archives. The library also has rich holdings of rare books, including an unusually strong collection of European architectural treatises.

The Agnes Etherington Art Centre, which has a close working relationship with the Department, offers outstanding collections of West African, Inuit, First Nations, European, and Canadian art, including costumes, quilts, and decorative arts, and runs a vital exhibition schedule of contemporary art. Part of the permanent collection is on display at all times; the rest, which is in storage, is available to graduate students by appointment. The Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), which permits access to information about the holdings of public collections across the country, is also accessible to graduate students through the Art Centre.

Financial Assistance

Apart from national and provincial awards, Graduate Awards may be made by the Department on the basis of merit. Teaching assistantships may be available to students in both the art conservation and art history programs. At the M.A. level, the Joseph S. Stauffer Foundation Scholarship is available to a student entering the second year of the Master's program in Art History with evidence of intent to write a thesis on a topic in Canadian Art or Architecture. At the Ph.D. level, several Bader Fellowships, valued up to $30,000 each, will be awarded each year for research in Europe.

Faculty

Head
Vorano, N.

Coordinator of Graduate Studies
D’Elia, U.

Professor
Bailey, G.¹, D'Elia, U., Hoeniger, C., Jessup, L., Morehead, A., Reeve, M., Spronk, R.

Associate Professor
Vorano, N.

Assistant Professor
Behan, A., Bevilacqua, J., Kennedy, J., Romba, K., Russell-Corbett, J.

Professor Emeritus
 Dickey, S., Du Prey, P., Finley, G.E., Helland, J., Schwartz, J.

Cross-Appointed Professor
Lord, S.

Cross-Appointed Associate Professor
Bevan, G.

¹

Bader Chair in Southern Baroque Art.

Programs

Courses

Not all the courses listed below will be offered in any one year; a few are offered only infrequently. A list of the expected offerings with detailed course descriptions is available from the department in July or August each year.

The content of the courses designated Studies or Topics and listed without further description in the calendar varies from year to year. 

Normally, courses are one-term, 3.0 credit unit courses. 

ARTH 800 Methods for an Expanded Art History
This course introduces students to various methods of an expanded art history addressing not only art works, but also objects of visual and material culture, institutional practices of collecting and display, and the writing of art history itself. Open to MA students only. Jointly offered with ARTH 900.  Winter.
EXCLUSION: ARTH 900

ARTH 802 Studies in the History of Prints and Drawings 
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 804  Studies in Critical and Cultural Theory  
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 805 Art Historiography    
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 806 Studies in Iconography   
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 807 Studies in the History of Renaissance Painting Technique     
Jointly offered with ARTH 402; Winter. 
EXCLUSION: ARTH 402

ARTH 809 Conservation and Art History  
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 810 Museums, Collecting and Culture I
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 811 Museums, Collecting and Culture II  
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 812 Studies in Visual and Material Cultures
Fall.

ARTH 813 Studies in Indigenous Visual and Material Cultures     
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 837 Medieval Art I   
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 838  Medieval Art II     
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 839  Medieval Art III     
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 840 Studies in Italian Renaissance Art I 
Not offered 2024-25.  

ARTH 841 Studies in Italian Renaissance Art II 
Not offered 2024-25.  

ARTH 842  Studies in Italian Renaissance Art III     
Jointly offered with ARTH 485; Fall. 

ARTH 844 Studies in Northern Renaissance Art  
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 845 Studies in Northern European Art of the 17th-Century I     
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 846 Studies in Northern European Art of the 17th-Century II  
Not offered 2024-25.
    
ARTH 847 Studies in Southern European Art of the 17th-Century I     
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 848 Studies in Southern European Art of the 17th-Century II 
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 849 Studies in 18th-Century European Art 
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 850 Studies in 19th-Century Art     
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 851 Studies in 19th-Century Art II  
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 854  Studies in Baroque
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 860 Cultural Heritage Preservation II    
Fall.

ARTH 861 Cultural Heritage Preservation II    
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 862 History of Photography I     
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 863 History of Photography II
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 864 Studies in Modern Art I   
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 865 Topics in Modern Art II
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 868 Topics in Contemporary Art I
Jointly offered with ARTH 422; Winter.
EXCLUSION: ARTH 422

ARTH 869 Topics in Contemporary Art II  
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 870 Studies in Canadian Art and Architecture I     
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 871 Studies in Canadian Art and Architecture II
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 874 Studies in Architectural History I
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 875 Studies in Architectural History II   
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 876 Studies in Curatorial Practice & Cultural Policy I     
Not offered in 2023-24.

ARTH 877 Studies in Curatorial Practice & Cultural Policy II  
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 878 Studies in Experimental & New Media I     
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 879 Studies in Experimental & New Media II     
Not offered 2024-25.

ARTH 880     Agnes Etherington Art Centre Practicum     
Fall, winter, or summer.  Various instructors.

ARTH 890  Directed Research in a Cultural Institution     
This course is intended to provide graduate students an opportunity to undertake a directed research project in an art gallery, museum, or archive. The research will focus on some aspect of the chosen institution's collection and will be supervised by a specialist in that area who works at the institution or co-supervised by such a specialist and a faculty member. Fall, winter, or summer.

ARTH 897 Directed Reading     
Individual directed reading course under the guidance of a faculty member in an area of the instructor's expertise.   Fall or Winter.

ARTH 898 Research Paper     

ARTH 899 Master's Thesis Research  

ARTH 900 Methods for an Expanded Art History
This course introduces students to various methods of an expanded art history addressing not only art works, but also objects of visual and material culture, institutional practices of collecting and display, and the writing of art history itself. Open to PhD students only. Jointly offered with ARTH 800. Winter. 
EXCLUSION:  ARTH 800

ARTH 906 General Area Examination III     

ARTH 907 Research Project at the Art Gallery of Ontario     

ARTH 997 Directed Reading     
Individual directed reading course under the guidance of a faculty member in an area of the instructor's expertise.  This course is normally reserved for Doctoral students. Fall or Winter

ARTH 999 Ph.D. Thesis Research