Art History

Consideration of the stylistic and contextual significance of representative monuments in the history of art.

A survey of the history of art, architecture and allied arts. This introduction to the history of art will examine a wide range of objects, selected and discussed in connection with a special theme to be selected by the instructor. Students will be expected to study the history and significance of art through the close reading of selected texts that relate to both art and theory. Special attention will be given to developing essential art historical skills necessary for upper level courses. The topic for each semester will vary based on the instructor. No previous knowledge of history of art or architecture is required. Frequent writing assignments and exercises will be based on readings, lectures, and museum or gallery visits to collections in Toronto.

We are surrounded by public art, whether in the form of official commemorative monuments or ephemeral (some say illegal) street art. We will examine the history and current practice of this important art form in Toronto and by comparison, globally. The focus will be on discussing the nature, roles, and issues pertaining to contemporary public art that we can see in situ in downtown Toronto. Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Walking is a basic human activity, yet it also defines and shapes us. In order to understand the permutations of this seemingly simple activity we will look at walking in a variety of contexts through the study of texts, art, movies and the built environment. Restricted to first-year students. Not available for CR/NCR option.

This course explores the visual and material worlds of the Italian traveller Marco Polo, which are described in his Travels. Together we will read sections of this text and explore their meaning with respect to the objects and monuments of Marco Polo’s time from the regions to which he travelled. By studying cartography, art, architecture, and urban form in the expansive medieval world of Marco Polo, the course will introduce us to the global world of the Middle Ages. Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

The ancient Greeks and Romans lived in a world full of images. Ancient visual culture comprises not only the high arts but also the everyday. This course is meant to introduce students to key ideas about how art and images in general impacted the life of ancient Greeks and Romans. Students will learn to examine various categories of visual material ranging from the pictorial and applied arts (painting, sculpture, architecture) to everyday artifacts (for example, domestic wares, jewelry or weapons). Through a series of discussion-centred seminar sessions students will explore the interconnections between art and ideology, art and identity as well as visuality and viewing. Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Art causes scandals for many reasons, provoking a range of consequences, including censorship, cuts to government funding of the arts or even destruction of the work in question. In this course we will consider a number of kinds of art scandal arising from exhibition in public galleries and urban spaces, including those that have to do with legal issues such as plagiarism and vandalism; aesthetic objections on the part of the public, ranging from perceived obscenity to simple resentment of abstract art; racism; sacrilege; and political subversion, amongst others. We will consider the work of artists including Chris Ofili, Joep van Lieshout, Paul McCarthy, Damien Hirst, Michael Snow, Sally Mann, Banksy, Rachel Whiteread, Richard Prince, Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, Carl Andre, Maya Lin, and Jeff Koons, amongst others. Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

“Curiosity” can refer to the desire to know or learn something, but the word has also been used to define objects of singular interest: “curiosities.” Drawing from the University of Toronto’s rich museum and library collections, this course will present an overview of the diverse and shifting European cultural attitudes toward curiosity—from the early modern period to the present. We will examine themes such as: museum history, rarity and monstrosity, natural history illustration, exploration and travel art, the construction of racial and cultural difference, and visual entertainment. Restricted to first-year students. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

This course will reveal the deep history of clay, stretching back to the Palaeolithic period with the first clay figurines; through the Neolithic period with its extensive use of clay for the earliest permanent houses, the first inorganic containers, and many votive offerings in clay; all the way to the present day with the ceramic art of Pablo Picasso, Grayson Perry, and Ai Weiwei. Our approach will also be thoroughly global, ranging from the Maya of Mesoamerica to the Mingei of Japan. The course will involve hands-on elements too, particularly with the nearby Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art.

An overview of the major monuments, artifacts, themes and problems in the study of the archaeology, art and architecture of the Aegean region and the east Mediterranean to 1000BC.

An overview of the major monuments, artifacts, themes and problems in the study of the archaeology, art and architecture of the civilizations of Greece and Rome.

An overview of major monuments and themes in the art and architecture of Western Europe and the Byzantine East from the third until the eleventh century.

An overview of major monuments and themes in the art and architecture of Western Europe and the Byzantine East from the eleventh until the fifteenth century.

A selective survey of the major art centres and types of artistic and architectural production in Italy and northern Europe, from the early fifteenth century to the mid-sixteenth. Themes include the relations--artistic, economic and ideological--between northern and southern Europe during this period, the changing role of art in religious life, the emergence of secular themes, and the legacies left by Renaissance art to modern life and culture.

Major forms of expression in the visual arts ca. 1600 - ca. 1750 with particular attention to forms, techniques, theories, and patronage of the arts as well as biographies of artists in Italy, France, the Netherlands, Flanders, Germany and England.

An introduction to the advent and development of art movements including Rococo and Neoclassicism; Romanticism and Revolution, Realism and the advent of Photography, Impressionism; Academic art; Post-Impressionism.

An introduction to the consolidation of Modernist tendencies in Europe to the mid 20th century and to the many contemporary responses to these achievements. Individual artists, including Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp, and Matthew Barney are considered in their relationship to various art movements and the theories that supported them, including Expressionism; Abstraction and Constructivism; Dada and Surrealism; Neue Sachlichkeit; Abstract Expressionism; Pop; Conceptual Art; Earth Art; Feminist Art; Postmodernism; New Media Art.

An introductory survey of the history of painting in Canada from the 17th to the 20th century.

This course surveys the history of photography in Europe and North America, from its origins to recent innovations in digital imaging.  Emphasis is placed on the various aesthetic, scientific, and political discourses in which photography has been located, and the assumptions and premises associated with the medium's relationship to reality.

A broad survey of Indigenous arts in North America from Mexico to the Arctic, and from ancient to modern. Students will gain a basic literacy in key artforms including painting, architecture, basketry and more, grounded in an awareness of Indigenous realities and historical currents.

An overview of major monuments and themes in the art and architecture of East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia and Tibet), from the neolithic to the present.

An overview of major monuments and themes in the art and architecture of East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia and Tibet) and its diaspora in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This course explores the architecture of the Islamic world from the 7th - 12th centuries through the lens of its major monuments throughout the central Islamic lands, North Africa and Spain. Through an emphasis upon the Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid and Seljuk periods, the course explores the range of cultural, political, social and religious aspects related to the development of the built environment. It also considers the impact of Islam's encounter with late antiquity and aims to position the rise of Islamic architecture within the context of this encounter. Additionally, the architecture is contextualized through a study of the urban history of select early and medieval Islamic cities.

A survey of architecture from pre-history to the start of modernism, with attention given to the ways in which architecture shapes human experience.

An introduction to the buildings, issues and ideas from Neoclassicism to the present.

An introduction to the traditions and patterns of building in Canada taking into account the unique landscapes, resources and history that comprise what is now a unified political entity. Lectures will pay special attention to the complexity of architecture throughout Canada including issues of land rights, natural resources, immigration, settlements and urban design, transportation, and heritage issues. A special feature of this class will be the opportunity to study Toronto first-hand through class projects. No previous architectural history study is required.

Credit course for supervised participation in faculty research project. Details at https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/academics/research-opportunities/.... Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

This course investigates the material culture, art and architecture of the Aegean civilizations from the Neolithic through to the building of the palaces of Crete around 2000BC.

This course surveys the cultural, artistic and social interactions between the Graeco-Roman world and the so-called ‘Barbarians’ beyond its eastern and northern confines. Chronologically, it spans from the Greek Geometric and Archaic periods (9th - 6th c. BCE) to the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of Early Medieval Europe (6th- 7th c. CE). The course will address issues of artistic production, material culture, ritual and cult in relation to the mobility of peoples and groups, objects and individuals.

This course provides a detailed investigation of the city of Athens, focusing on the art, architecture and archaeology in the later Archaic and Classical Period. A combination of topographical and chronological approach is taken to familiarize the students with both the physical cityscape as well as its development in the context of major areas of interest, such as politics, religion and social customs. Some broad themes explored include: art, democracy and propaganda (Agora), the impact of the Persian wars, ritual and religious festivals (Acropolis), the symposium, Athenian women, funerary art (Kerameikos), cult, sanctuaries and votives, art and Athenian drama. The course will also feature digital humanities components in the assignments, which may involve spatial mapping, 3D tools/VR and/or databases, as well as a trip to the Royal Ontario Museum.

The art, architecture and archaeology of the city of Rome to AD476.

This course is a comprehensive exploration of the art of Greek vase painting, covering material from the late Geometric period (8th C. BCE) to the late Classical Period (4th C. BCE). While iconography and narrative will form a major portion of the ceontent, the class will also explore issues surrounding material and technique, the prevalent sympotic (drinking) culture and Greek rituals that provides the cultural framework, dynamics of trade, theories of viewership and semiotics, status of the artist, and other historiographical concerns, including problematic issues surrounding the modern practice of collecting.

The course provides a thorough examination of ancient Greek sculpture from 7th - 1st century BCE, which in many ways defined the canon of western art that was to follow. Classic issues of style, dating, and technique are complemented by putting them into the contexts of cultural history, religion and socio-politics. While the course is a traditional monument-based survey of major sculptural works from the ancient Greek world, several important issues are also addressed, pertaining both to contemporary society and the study of other areas of art history. These include but are not limited to: gender, social class, colonialism, notion of the artist, originality, and aesthetic theory.

Transformation in the visual arts, paintings, sculpture, and mosaics of the expanding Greek world c. 400BC to c. 100BC; the response to Hellenization from the new artistic centres of Asia Minor and Italy.

A general introduction to Greek mythology and its uses (and abuses) by the Greeks and Romans through the art of antiquity. Students will learn about gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, their attributes and stories which constituted the subjects of (not only) ancient art.

Erotic ‘imagery’ – sculptures, reliefs, paintings – is ubiquitous in ancient art, to a degree that modern viewers have often found disturbing. This course faces the challenge posed by the ancient predilection for such imagery and explores it from a critical and scholarly perspective. At its most basic level, it reassigns a seemingly universal segment of human ‘nature’ and experience to the realm of culture, by examining the imagery against the background of ancient constructions of sexuality, gender and the body. But it also explores the libidinal and hedonic structure of the works of art themselves and asks for the functions of erotic imagery in its respective contexts. The course will avail itself of the excellent research on gender, sexuality and eroticism in antiquity that has been produced over the past few decades, and it will also explore the topic’s lateral connections with the thematic fields of ancient humour, the ‘grotesque’, apotropaism, myth and magic.

An examination of the role played by monks and nuns in the creation and use of art and architecture in the Middle Ages.

A focused survey of different types of manuscripts and their images from the origins of the book in Late Antiquity to the invention of printing.

By challenging essentialist questioning of Islamic urbanism, this course considers the inter-animated and complex web of forces that drive cities forward by identifying repertoires of underlying logic. Through a deep and historically situated reading of Medieval Mecca, Medina, Damascus, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Cairo, and Cordoba, we will map and encode history on the urban scale to reveal what makes a city "Islamic." Visual mapping skill cultivation for communication purposes (both digital and analogue) will be taught throughout to enhance understandings of urban complexity in rich historical contexts.

From its earliest beginnings as an Umayyad province and up until the 15th century, al-Andalus acted as a lynch pin within the Mediterranean world. Connecting the Islamic empire in the East and forging links of trade and cultural exchange with Europe to the West, cities such as Cordoba and Granada captured the imagination of contemporary chroniclers, earning descriptions in the sources as truly “first-rate places”. Through an exploration of the historical, artistic, architectural, urban, social and economic contexts, this course will engage with and expand upon current understandings of this seminal period in Islamic history to examine Islam’s encounters and modes of cultural exchange with Europe and the Mediterranean world.

A consideration of art and architecture made for the court, the aristocracy, and other patrons outside the realm of the Christian church.

An examination of the Gothic cathedral from its origins in Paris in the 1130’s through its development and elaboration in France, England and Italy. This course also considers monumental decorations in painted glass, wall painting, tapestry and portal sculpture.

Albrecht Dürer and the painting and printmaking of his contemporaries. Consideration of the great Hall churches of Saxony and the altarpieces of Tilman Riemenschneider and his contemporaries; the status of the arts and attitudes towards Italian art, and the consequences of the Reformation for religious imagery.

Painting, sculpture and architecture of the Netherlands in the sixteenth century with reference to the arts in Italy, France, Germany and Spain. Consideration of Netherlandish art in the context of literature, religion, urban expansion, political and economic developments; and as a system of communication. Particular attention devoted to Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, the rise of secular art.

Love is studied not only as a favorite theme of Renaissance art, but as the basis of some of its fundamental aesthetic claims. The question of love connects Renaissance art to important strains of philosophical thought and religious spirituality, as well as to some urgent realities of social life.

This course examines works in different art media, including painting, sculpture and prints, produced from 1400 to 1600, discussing how artistic practice of imitation and emulation stimulated the development of individual styles. In addition, this course addresses notions of disruptive rivalry, and the representation of slander and envy.

It has long been said that the material culture of the Renaissance generated the first stir of consumerism with a variety of artifacts produced from 1400 to 1700 in Italy.  This course explores the material culture of Renaissance consumerism and discusses the production and function of works in different art media.

Concentration on the major painters of Holland’s Golden Age, ca. 1580-ca. - 1700. Particular attention is paid to genre painting and the notion of “Dutch realism.” Consideration of art within its social and political contexts. Notions of gender, of the historical past, of embodiment, and of contact with the non-western world will be discussed.

Form and meaning, theory and practice of painting and architecture in Venice, ca. 1450-ca. 1600. Social, political and cultural contexts of making and viewing art, including works by Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto and Palladio.

This course explores the painting, sculpture, and graphic arts of the Romantic era in France, from abOUT 1820 to 1850. Major emphasis on Gericault, Delacroix, and Ingres in their artistic, cultural, and political context. Key topics in Romanticism, including Orientalism and gender, are also explored.

The origin and development of Impressionism in France and Europe, 1860-1886, in its social, political and intellectual context. Painting, graphics and sculpture by Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Sisley, Cassatt and Morisot.

An investigation of the birth and development of Cubism, Futurism and Orphism in Europe and North America.

The origins and development of the Dada and Surrealist movements in early 20th-century Western art, and their lasting impact on art after World War II. Painting, sculpture, graphic arts, and the theoretical preoccupation which accompanied artistic production.

The origins, development, and critical issues pertaining to abstract or non-figurative modes of art as manifested in painting, sculpture and other selected media upt to the present time. Movements include European abstract art before World War II as well as post-war developments.

An investigation of the different definitions and issues of minimal art including seriality, materials, process, objecthood, chance, installation, reception, relations to music and film, and the influence of structuralism.

An introduction to the major artists, movements, and debates in photography in Europe and North America, from its prehistory to the turn of the century.  Issues considered include the relationship of social class to aesthetics, the role of illusion, the rise of mass reproduction.

Examination of the historical development of the cultures of exhibition in Nineteenth-Century Europe, and the diversity of venues displaying works of art and nature. Historical and theoretical overview is complemented by case studies which include investigations of private cabinets of curiosity, encyclopedic museums, commercial galleries, side-shows, and world's fairs.

An examination of the visual arts in Canada from the 1960’s to the present. A large and diverse range of media, practices, artists, and theoretical contexts will be examined. Emphasis is placed on work that can be seen in the original.

Ecological art is a focus in contemporary global art. We examine ecoart’s antecedents in the landscape genre and Earth Art and the diverse theoretical and disciplinary perspectives that inform our understanding of these movements. Artists include Burtynsky, Eliasson, Long, Mendieta, Netco, Smithson, Turrell. Readings include Deleuze, Heidegger, Latour.

This course surveys late imperial Chinese decorative arts from the Song (960-1127) through Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. It focuses on ceramics/porcelain, textiles, and furniture, attending especially to works in Toronto collections. Students will read primary and secondary sources to learn how decorative arts shaped daily life in imperial China.

East Asian images differ from Western ones in material support, format, and technologies of image-making. This course probes how East Asian images -- painting on objects, handscrolls, prints, optical media, film, and new media – work.

An overview of the visual culture (monuments to films) of South Asia form the Indus Valley Civilization (3500 BCE) to the contemporary. Focus on visual literacy, stylistic evolution, major concepts and the first-hand study of objects.

Architecture and architectural theory ca. 1400 – ca. 1600.

Architecture studied through its various building types and in its urban context. Themes include architecture and power under Absolutism, and the rise of the modern city.

Vernacular traditions in building, patterns of settlement and urbanization, and development of high styles in architecture in New France, British North America, and what is now Canada, from ca. 1650 to ca. 1925. Material economy, cultural identity, local character, regional expression, national symbolism and international influences.

The study of various aesthetic, cultural, social, political, and theoretical aspects of Western art and photography across the centuries.

This course investigates the changing definition of Jewish art and the status of Jewish artists. Other issues explored include Jewish-Christian visual polemics, the construction of individual and communal Jewish identity through art, architecture, and texts, and the conceptual transformation of Jewish craft and ritual objects into art.

Study and practice in the variety of writing genres and styles associated with art history and contemporary criticism. Students will develop skills in writing for museum exhibitions and publications, reviews and criticism, academic analysis, and writing for popular print and media. Regular and frequent writing assignments. Recommended for FAH majors and specialists.

Investigates the development of art and architectural history as an academic discipline and method of analysis including discussion of varied approaches such as formalism, connoisseurship, post-colonialism, feminism, queer studies, psychoanalysis, and material studies. The course explores the relationship of art history to other disciplines including archaeology, literary criticism, film studies, and anthropology. Suggested for all Specialists and students considering graduate study in art history.

Through site visits and local resources, this course looks at the history of Spanish art and architecture, including the various work created by the diverse religious and political groups of the Iberian peninsula. The specific focus of the course may vary from year to year.

Studies Abroad in Ancient Art and Architecture. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Studies Abroad in Medieval Art and Architecture. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Studies Abroad in Renaissance and Baroque Art and Architecture. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Studies Abroad in Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture.

Studies Abroad in Canadian Art and Architecture. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Studies Abroad in Asian Art and Architecture. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Studies Abroad in Architectural History. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

An instructor-supervised group project in an off-campus setting. Details at https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/academics/research-opportunities/.... Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

An instructor-supervised group project in an off-campus setting. Details at https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/academics/research-opportunities/.... Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

An instructor-supervised group project in an off-campus setting. Details at https://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/academics/research-opportunities/.... Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Investigation of the wall-paintings of the Minoan, Cycladic and Mycenaean worlds in the second millennium BC: context, associations, viewing and historical interpretations.

The Greek god Dionysos presents a multifaceted entry point into exploring Ancient Greek art, culture, religion and history. This course is a comprehensive exploration of the figure of Dionysos, from his obscure pre-historic beginnings of foreign origin, to his transformation into other post-classical entities, spanning Christianity to Buddhism. A substantial part of the course deals with his representations in Greek art, and the god's relationship to the Greeks as the governing figure of many important facets of their lives: drinking practices, sexuality, the performative arts, and the transition into the afterlife through the notion of eternal bliss. The course reading draws on art historical literature, as well as primary sources, and theoretical texts regarding religion and cultural practices.

When cultures collide, they assimilate, they exchange, they transform, and they develop, and there seems to be a pattern of recognizable centres of power around which artistic tradition often revolves. This has caused the conventional understanding of certain flowering of artistic heritage as a product of cross-cultural influences. This course is a seminar style survey that explores these fascinating amalgams of artistic traditions that lie at the Eastern outskirts of the Hellenistic world throughout the roman Period, from Bactria to India, and with a heavy focus on the Buddhist art of Gandhara, reaching out along the Silk Road.  As the title suggests, the class aims at a renewed framework that re-evaluates the role of the Ancient West, which has been absent since the heavily Eurocentric scholarship from the early 20th century. It also aims to familiarize students with current theoretical issues surrounding cross-cultural studies as it pertains to the visual arts, touching upon modern postcolonial theories of space.

Issues explored might cover Republican and Imperial painting; its Hellenistic sources and parallel media (mosaic, relief). The four distinctive genres of Roman sculptural production: the portrait, the historical relief, sarcophagi, and replicas of famous Greek sculptures. Styles, themes and modes of display in cultural context.

This seminar explores the architectural and urban development of Islamic Cairo (al-Qahira) between the 7th and 16th centuries. As a nexus of both the Islamic empire and the Mediterranean world, Cairo provides an opportunity to explore a major Islamic Medieval city. Modern day Cairo emerged first as a provincial capital (al-Fustat and later al-Qata'a) in the 7th and 8th century and later morphed into a capital under successive dynasties from the 9th to the 16th century. Exploring Cairo throughout this critical historical period, one of both relative stability and upheaval during the post-conquest period to the Crusades, allows for a better understanding of the reciprocity between architecture and urbanism on the one hand and broader political shifts on the other. A central organizing theme of this course is Cairo's position as a place of multiplicity and confessional diversity, embedded within networks of cultural and economic exchange. Other themes explored include the role played by ceremonies and processions on urban form and the development of public space as well as the development of various religious, charitable, military and educational institutions and their impact upon shaping the city.

In-depth examination of monuments and issues in the art and architecture of Western Europe from the sixth to the fifteenth century.

A focused examination of urbanism, art and architecture of a specific medieval city, such as Jerusalem, Rome, Constantinople, or Paris.

Around 2000 BC, the island of Crete sees the emergence of what are arguably the earliest towns and states in European prehistory. At the heart of this new social order are the so-called ‘palaces’, massive architectural complexes usually interpreted as seats of administrative and political authority. However, fresh discoveries over the past two decades, coupled recently with radical new interpretations, require a fundamental rethinking of the nature of the palaces and their role in Minoan society. This course will provide students with an active opportunity to learn about the latest developments in Minoan art, architecture, and archaeology.

A consideration of individual types of books, their decoration, function, and cultural context. Topics might include, for example, Gospels, Psalters, or Books of Hours.

The study of Pieter Bruegel’s works in the context of Netherlandish culture. Emphasis on secular works.

This seminar examines major critical developments in the interpretation of High Renaissance art in Italy by looking at key works produced by Leonardo, his contemporaries, and followers (1470-1530).

In Vasari’s Lives of the Artists and their “after-lives,” painters and humanists explored questions of word and image, art and life, biography and history, the psychology of style, the economics and politics of art and the languages of art.  How and why did art history originate?

This seminar explores fashion in the visual and material culture of Renaissance Italy. It focuses on the discourse of fashion as represented by Renaissance artists in their works and as treated in contemporary texts. It further examines the multiple meanings of dress in the courts of Renaissance Italy.

"Bad" art is a critical category that shadows and defines "good" art.  How has the art of invective shaped the histories of art by applying ethical, psychological and anthropological values to the world of art?  Topics include blasphemy, decadence, senility, the "other" and anti-social behaviors.  Special attention will be given to such prejudicial period styles as Gothic, Mannerism, Baroque and Rococo, and to such artistic movements as the Macchiaioli, neo-Kitsch, Dada, Automatism and Degenerate Art.  Readings range from Seneca and Vitruvius to Walter Benjamin and Clement Greenberg. Case studies of artists range from Caravaggio to Odd Nerdrum.

Study of so-called “scenes of everyday life.” Special attention given to cultural context and problems of constructions of gender and gendered relationships, of social and economic interests, of class conflict, of the relationship with broader European culture. Considerable attention will be paid to the work of Jan Vermeer.

‘Arctic Anthropocene’ examines the extensive visual culture of voyages in the Arctic in the long 19th century. We will probe both Western and Inuit perspectives on the search for the Northwest Passage, whaling, and scientific understandings of the exotic meteorological, human, and animal phenomena of this region through its complex image culture. To underscore ecological understandings of the Arctic in the 19th century and today, we will frame our investigation of the visual culture of this place and time with an interrogation of the notion of the ‘Anthropocene.’

Investigation of English, French, German and Swiss landscape painting from the birth of the Romantic movement to Post-Impressionism.

Developments in the mainstream of Western painting and sculpture since World War II with special emphasis upon interrelations between Europe and North America.

Selected aspects of the complex array of international contemporary art movements, their artists, objects, and critical discourses. Potential issues include the theoretical, philosophical, and political concerns addressed by given artworks and artists; the role of art journals, the private patron, and museum display.

This course focuses on Indigenous artists working both within and outside of contemporary art spaces in Canada and the United States, through a study of key exhibitions and movements in the Indigenous arts community from 1984 to the present. From the Columbus Quincentennial in 1992 and its echoes in the "Canada 150" celebrations, to artists working from the front lines of land protection movements, we will explore ideas of nationalism, inclusion, intervention, and 'decolonization' of the gallery.

Focused, thematic examinations of the visual arts in Canada in the first half of the twentieth century.

Focused, thematic examinations of the visual arts in Canada from c. 1960 to the present.

Methodologically-focused seminar engaged with recovering and articulating in Western terms indigenous ways of seeing and thinking about East Asian art.

Seminar based on firsthand examination of East Asian objects in Toronto collections that attends to the historical processes by which such objects were valued and collected.

In-depth examination of the play of East Asian Art within and beyond East Asia.

This seminar teaches students the skills required to curate an exhibition of Chinese materials. Working firsthand with objects of Chinese art and visual culture in local Toronto collections, students learn to document the object, assess authenticity, write object labels, panel texts, and catalogue essays. Students will thus prepare an exhibition, actual or virtual, of Chinese objects in local collections.

An in-depth study of themes and problems in architecture in Renaissance and Baroque Europe.

Focused examination of themes and methods in the history of architecture since 1750.

An in-depth study of themes in the history of architecture and landscape in Canada.

The internship is designed to offer hands-on experience pertaining to the study, exhibition, and care of works of art, focused on the collections and activities of the University Art Centre, an auction house, a public museum, or a private gallery. Students must provide proof of their acceptance as an intern by the Art Centre/auction house/museum/gallery in order to be enrolled in the course. This course is Pass/Fail. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

The internship is designed to offer hands-on experience pertaining to the study, exhibition, and care of works of art, focused on the collections and activities of the University Art Centre, an auction house, a public museum, or a private gallery. Students must provide proof of their acceptance as an intern by the Art Centre/auction house/museum/gallery in order to be enrolled in the course. This course is Pass/Fail. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

An introduction to conservation, designed to give students a basic understanding of the field, its techniques, and its purposes. Sessions conducted by specialists in the Royal Ontario Museum conservation department.

This course examines the history, meaning and consumption of Western European fashion (18th - 21st centuries). Analysis and research will combine student seminars with the study of actual artefacts in the Textile & Costume Collection of the Royal Ontario Museum.

Theoretical and practical engagement with the ROM's Canadian paintings, prints and drawing collections (18th-20th C). Through lectures, workshops, and seminars, we consider the collecting, interpretation, and display of images within the framework of “documentary art” and its various connotations.

In-depth investigation of objects at the Royal Ontario Museum. Content will vary according to the museum department offering the course in any given semester.

Introduction to the diverse textile traditions of Asia and the diverse means for interpreting them, with a concentration on core production areas, select regional traditions and connecting forces. Includes first-hand study of objects in ROM collections and glalleries and possible guest lectures.

Focused examination of special topics in any period of Mediterranean, European, North American, or Asian art and architecture.

The Indian Ocean has been called the Cradle of Globalization. For thousands of years monsoon winds linked the people and arts of this vast Ocean that stretches from East Africa in the West to Indonesia (and beyond) in the East. Throughout its long history, handwoven textiles have been amongst the area’s greatest art forms, trade goods, religious objects and markers of identity. This course will survey the wide variety of these forms, from c. 1100 to 1950. Special attention is placed on India, which lies at the center of the region, and originated many of the fibres, techniques, design and iconography of the wider area. Select regional manifestations are then examined in depth, using the ROM’s extensive collections. These range from the silks of Madagascar, to embroidered men’s wear of Oman, to the cosmopolitan batiks of northern coastal Java. It is seen that all these traditions can best be understood within the framework of the wider Indian Ocean region.

Eligible students may undertake an independent study course under the supervision of Department of Art History (St. George campus) faculty member. Refer to the Art History website for further information and application instructions. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.

Eligible students may undertake an independent study course under the supervision of a Department of Art History (St. George campus) faculty member. Refer to the Art History website for detailed information and application instructions. Not eligible for CR/NCR option.