Welcome

Photo of Borland Building on the University Park Campus, future home of the Department of Art History. The Department of Art History at Penn State offers at the undergraduate level the B.A. degree in Art History and two minors: the Minor in Art History and the Interdisciplinary Minor in Architectural History. The Department offers graduate programs of study leading to the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Art History. The department offers lecture/discussion courses and undergraduate and graduate seminars on a broad range of topics, from ancient to contemporary art and architecture in Europe, the United States, Africa, and Asia. Courses are also offered in museum studies, iconology, and criticism. Courses are taught by eleven full-time faculty members and six affiliate faculty members.

Arts Building, Current home of the Department of Art History.

Penn State is a Big Ten, land-grant university whose University Park campus is situated in State College, a congenial college town surrounded by the ridges of the Alleghenies of central Pennsylvania. The campus is a half-day's drive to the museums, galleries, and libraries of Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, Buffalo, Toronto, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh.

Penn State’s University Libraries have major and extensive holdings in the history of art in the Arts and Humanities Library, the Architecture Library, and the Rare Books and Manuscripts unit of the Special Collections Library. The Department of Art History also has its own reading rooms within the department. The department’s Visual Resources Centre has more than 400,000 slides. The growing use of digital images has been facilitated by technological advances in the Visual Resources Centre and Penn State’s classrooms. The Visual Resources Centre is a member of the Visual Resources Association and is overseen by two full-time professional staff members.

Palmer Museum of Art.

Penn State’s Palmer Museum of Art was expanded in the 1990s with a major addition designed by the noted postmodern architect Charles W. Moore with Arbonies King Vlock. The museum has a growing permanent collection in Western, Asian, and contemporary art, with particularly strong holdings in American art. It also features a regular program of changing exhibitions. The museum’s director and curators all hold affiliate faculty status in the Department of Art History. Every spring, the staff of the Palmer teach a museum studies course in our department. Moreover, every semester, one of the curators teaches an art history course in the department.

An annual lecture series is hosted by the department, which brings leading scholars in art history to Penn State to share their latest research. Eleven volumes of the Papers in Art History from The Pennsylvania State University have been published by the Department of Art History, based upon former lecture series (the volumes are distributed by the Penn State University Press). The department’s George Dewey and Mary J. Krumrine Endowment has helped support the publication of the Papers and is currently supporting major publication projects of the Art History faculty and graduate students.

Our department is regularly invited to select graduate students to participate in major graduate student symposia, including the Middle Atlantic Symposium in the History of Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Philadelphia Symposium on the History of Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Penn State art history graduate students often present papers at scholarly conferences/symposia across the United States and abroad.

The department also has an active Undergraduate Art History Association. Penn State’s Summer Abroad program in Todi, Italy, is co-sponsored by the Department of Art History.

Pieto Vecchia (Italian, Venice, 1603-1678) Sacrifice of Jephthah’s Daughter, circa 1650-1666, Oil on canvas, 30.5 by 54.25 inches, Gift of Morton and Mary Jane Harris

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Last Updated: Wednesday, September 13, 2006