Art History

The adjudged authenticity of a work of art is fundamental in determining its value as a commodity on the art market or, for example, in property claim disputes or in issues of cultural property restitution. Using case studies some straightforward and others extremely vexing--this course examines the many ways in which authenticity is measured through the use of provenance and art historical research, connoisseurship, and forensic resources. From within the broader topics, finer issues will also be explored, among them, the hierarchy of attribution, condition and conservation, copies and reproductions, the period eye and the style of the marketplace.

The adjudged authenticity of a work of art is fundamental in determining its value as a commodity on the art market or, for example, in property claim disputes or in issues of cultural property restitution. Using case studies some straightforward and others extremely vexing--this course examines the many ways in which authenticity is measured through the use of provenance and art historical research, connoisseurship, and forensic resources. From within the broader topics, finer issues will also be explored, among them, the hierarchy of attribution, condition and conservation, copies and reproductions, the period eye and the style of the marketplace.

This course will utilize New York City collections to show how the movement of luxury materials, made possible by nomads, was essential to the production of the canonical art works we now admire in museums. We will begin by studying nomadic cultures in the classroom and at the AMNH to better understand why tents are one of the oldest forms of architectural expression throughout the world. We then move to address how recent exhibitions have highlighted an interconnected globe in the premodern period, and what revelations these shows have brought to changing our perspective on how we make art into history and consider future directions in visualizing heretofore silent journeys. Students will get to know NYC collections, meet curators and conservators, and spend the entire semester with one object, which they will research in depth throughout the semester.

This course explores the functions and meanings of Greek painted ceramics made in the sixth century BCE, taking the collections of the Metropolitan Museum as its focus. Today these vessels are enshrined in display cases and elevated as art objects. But what roles did they play for the ancient people who used them? Who made them, and how? What substances did they hold? What did their decorations mean? Why were they acquired by people living thousands of miles away from where they were made? We will examine the overlapping roles of Archaic Greek vessels as functional containers, artistic creations, ancient commodities, and modern collectors’ items. Rather than foregrounding Athenian vases, we will consider them alongside Boeotian, Corinthian, Chalcidian, East Greek, and Laconian vessels to better understand the many roles ceramics played across the Greek world. The relationship between Greek ceramics and those created by neighboring cultures including the Etruscans and Egyptians will be discussed. Emphasis will be placed on understanding Greek vessels as objects that connected different cultures as they moved through the Mediterranean.

This course examines the conception and spatialization of religious experience in ancient Greece through brief chronological surveys and thematic case studies. Definitions of “sacred,” “ritual,” and “divine” will frame lectures and class discussions on cult locations and religious architecture in mainland Greece and western Asia Minor from the Archaic (8th century BCE) to the Early Roman Imperial (2nd century CE) periods.

The architectural articulation of sanctuaries will be observed in relation to socio-political, historical, and artistic conditions in which these spaces were formed and existed. Case studies will involve both conventional (e.g., athletic) and idiosyncratic (e.g., healing, mystery performances) cult practices.

The second half of the summer session will focus on the materiality of the sacred through smallscale dedications and will make use of the vast collections of the Metropolitan Museum. Finally, we will observe NYC’s urban fabric in walking tours where we consider Greek Revival architecture and phenomena such as continuity, transformation, de-sacralization, and secularization.

This course examines three masters of European Baroque art—Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), and Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)—artists who are all well represented in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Through classroom discussions and museum visits, we will examine Baroque art as part of a continuing and developing accumulation of forms and ideas throughout the 17th century, and consider the impact these artists had on their contemporaries and in ensuing centuries. Roughly half of the class sessions take place at The Metropolitan Museum, a luxury that allows for close, firsthand analysis of art, but it is not an art appreciation course. It is a history course concerned with the study of ideas, artists, and visual facts and their application to emerging art forms within their cultural-historical context. In addition to developing a critical eye, the class is intended to cultivate analytical thinking and communication skills as well as knowledge of the subject matter.

No background in art history is necessary to do well in this course, but students are expected to read and listen closely and to write thoughtfully. Attendance is crucial. Students who attend class, take notes, and read everything will have no difficulty earning a satisfactory grade. Above all, never hesitate to ask questions and see me during office hours.

Coming on the heels of the MoMA's blockbuster exhibit, this seminar will trace the rise and fall of Abstract Expressionism, from its pre-World War II precipitates in Europe (Surrealism) and in America (Regionalism), to the crucial moment when, as scholar Serge Guilbaut has argued, New York 'stole' the idea of modern art, and finally, through the decade when Pop Art rendered Abstract Expressionism obsolete. Although special emphasis will be given to Jackson Pollock, whose persona and work reside at the literal and figurative center of the movement, we will also look closely at works by Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Willem DeKooning, Lee Krasner, Louise Bourgeois, Helen Frankenthaler, Eva Hesse, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly. Class lectures and presentations will be supplemented with trips to New York's world-renowned museums.

Coming on the heels of the MoMA's blockbuster exhibit, this seminar will trace the rise and fall of Abstract Expressionism, from its pre-World War II precipitates in Europe (Surrealism) and in America (Regionalism), to the crucial moment when, as scholar Serge Guilbaut has argued, New York 'stole' the idea of modern art, and finally, through the decade when Pop Art rendered Abstract Expressionism obsolete. Although special emphasis will be given to Jackson Pollock, whose persona and work reside at the literal and figurative center of the movement, we will also look closely at works by Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Willem DeKooning, Lee Krasner, Louise Bourgeois, Helen Frankenthaler, Eva Hesse, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly. Class lectures and presentations will be supplemented with trips to New York's world-renowned museums.

This course will introduce students to the history of museums and display practices through New York collections. The birth of the museum as a constitutive element of modernity coincides with the establishment of European nation states. Throughout the course of the nineteenth century, museums were founded in major European and American cities to classify objects, natural and manmade, from plants and fossils to sculpture and clothing. This course presents the alternate art history that can be charted through an examination of the foundation and development of museums from cabinets of curiosity to the collection-less new museums currently being built in the Middle East and beyond. We will consider broad thematic issues such as nationalism, colonialism, canon formation, the overlapping methods of anthropology and art history, and the notion of 'framing' from the architectural superstructure to exhibition design. We will visit a wide variety of museums from the American Museum of Natural History to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum as in-depth case studies of more general concepts. Students will have the opportunity to meet museum educators, conservators and curators through on site teaching in a variety of institutions.

Through an examination of painting, sculpture, decorative arts, photography. fashion and visual culture of the United States from 1750 to 1914, the course will explore how American artists responded to and operated within the wider world, while grappling with issues of identity at home. Addressing themes shared in common across national boundaries, the class will consider how American art participated in the revolutions and reforms of the "long" nineteenth century, and how events of the period continue to impact our country today. The period witnessed the emergence of new technologies for creating, using and circulating images and objects, the expansion and transformation of exhibition and viewing practices, and the rise of new artistic institutions, as well as the metamorphosis of the United States from its colonial origins to that of a world power, including the radical changes that occurred during the Civil War.  With many sessions taking place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the class will investigate how American art engaged with international movements while constructing national identity during a period of radical transformation both at home and abroad.

The use of artificial intelligence—propelled by deep learning techniques—to analyze, curate, and generate digital images is having a profound influence on visual culture, one that well exceeds Jacques Derrida's anticipations of the effects of technology on society as he described them in Archive Fever. While regulation around emerging technologies such as AI is being formulated across the globe with much urgency, a problematic concept of “tech ethics” is being espoused by the leading technology companies that imposes a simplistic moralistic framework on potential policies. Through examination of the creative applications of AI, the aim of this seminar is to foster a nuanced critical discourse on AI art that places the ethics of emerging technologies at center stage. This course provides students with an introduction to the history of AI art and explores the challenges and opportunities that this burgeoning field faces, especially in regard to the regulation of technology. Class visits to Mercer Labs, Artechouse, MoMA, and the Whitney will allow students to directly engage with the core concepts of the seminar.

The course begins with reflection on Adorno’s prescient statement that technical rationality is “the rationality of domination,” and challenges both the cynicism and optimism around emerging technologies and their effect on visual culture. We will question the accountability that art history and other fields of study have, if any, to steer the ethics debates spurred by today’s “culture industry” of digital images, and ask what the custodianship of this space entails by examining its structures of power, conveyed visually or through automated processes enabled by computer vision science. By interrogating the socio-cultural effects of the use of machine learning on images—such as algorithmic biases that lend to discrimination, or surveillance and privacy concerns in regard to facial recognition technologies—new and diverse perspectives on visual culture are investigated. Although the mechanisms that enable technology to develop may be lending to the commodification and homogenization of visual culture, the seemingly democratic promises that big tech touts keep us captivated yet surprisingly uncritical. If the transformative role of AI on our visual culture is constituting a new type of archaeology of knowledge, how do we critically lend to its discourse through the theories, methods, and experiments surrounding art and AI?

A topical introduction to the architecture and arts of the Islamic cultures of North Africa, Spain, Arabia, Turkey, Iran and Central Asia, from their origins in late antiquity to 1400 CE. A wide variety of media will be explored as we look at artistic accomplishments in both the religious and secular realms. We will study architectural monuments from palaces to mosques as well as small-scale luxury items like textiles, metalwork, ceramics, and illuminated manuscripts.  There will be at least one mandatory class trip to the Metropolitan Museum.

Introduction to 2000 years of art on the Indian subcontinent. The course covers the early art of Buddhism, rock-cut architecture of the Buddhists and Hindus, the development of the Hindu temple, Mughal and Rajput painting and architecture, art of the colonial period, and the emergence of the Modern.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.

Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.