The Art History & Visual Studies program offers two distinct tracks for undergraduate majors and minors, designed to help students prepare for the many career choices available to students pursuing a degree in one of the richest and most diverse fields in the humanities.
Students of Art History & Visual Studies will graduate with valuable, marketable skills to include visual analysis, critical writing and thinking and a sophisticated understanding of the increasingly visual culture we all live and work in. Majors are encouraged to pursue internship opportunities to gain further experience in the field. Students have undertaken internships on-campus at the UK Art Museum and in nationally-recognized institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Career opportunities in Art History & Visual Studies:
University of Kentucky student Elizabeth Glass recently participated in a highly competitive internship at the Cloisters Museum and Garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. At the Metropolitan, Glass mainly worked at the Cloisters giving tours and helped maintain and expand the department’s collection database.
Art History & Visual Studies
The Art History and Visual Studies program offers two distinct tracks for undergraduate majors: Art History focuses on the development of the visual arts, particularly on the histories of “high” or “fine” art within a broad liberal arts tradition. Visual Studies offers majors a broad interdisciplinary selection of courses and methodologies from the arts, design, humanities, social sciences, and sciences to study the uses to which people put the visual and the place of the visual within the context of diverse cultures and within a global context.
This option focuses on the development of the visual arts, particularly on the histories of “high” or “fine” art within a broad liberal arts tradition. Students study artistic images, objects, and events representing diverse cultures within a global context. The program puts strong emphasis on the acquisition of skills in written and oral communication, foreign language comprehension, critical reading, and problem solving, all leading to the pursuit of independent scholarship in art history. These are skills useful for virtually any career path, but specifically, this option prepares majors to pursue post-graduate studies in art history and related humanistic disciplines, leading to careers in academia, arts administration, visual resources management, museum professions, and similar fields.
Ours is a visual culture. Workplaces today are visually saturated environments, our dominant pastimes are visual media (films, television, video, the internet, etc.); knowledge is commonly communicated visually. Visual Studies teach critical viewing to prepare us for the visually complex milieu of the 21st Century. This option offers majors a broad interdisciplinary selection of courses and methodologies from the arts, design, humanities, social sciences, and sciences to study the uses to which people put the visual and the place of the visual within the context of diverse cultures and within a global context. Students who choose this option could pursue further training leading to careers in visual resource management, law, journalism, or may pursue graduate work in visual studies, cultural studies, film studies, and art history.
In addition to the Art History & Visual Studies curriculum, students will also complete 30 hours of UK Core. The College of Fine Arts additionally requires that all majors complete 6 hours of coursework outside their departments but within the College of Fine Arts and at least 39 hours of courses at or above the 300-level.
While there are endless ways to create an unforgettable journey as a Wildcat, we can only think of one that gives you the chance to step outside the classroom and into exploring new parts of the world around you: participating in an Education Abroad opportunity! Whether it’s in a study, research, service, or internship program, taking your UK experience international with EA is the most hands-on way for you to expand your global perspective while making yourself a more well-rounded, marketable candidate to future employers no matter your field. As you take these first steps towards investing in your future, EA encourages you to take advantage of all the opportunities UK has to offer. Take a look at some of the many suggested opportunities UK Education Abroad & Exchanges has to complement your major! #ukyabroad
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College of Fine Arts
School of Art & Visual Studies
236 Bolivar Street
Lexington, KY 40508
859-257-8151
