These courses, with their emphasis on researching, writing, and critical evaluation of writings on art, enable students to develop their own critical and theoretical points of view. These courses sharpen the verbal, analytical, and presentation skills needed to present artwork or to pursue a concurrent career in museum or gallery work, writing criticism, collecting or cataloguing artworks, or teaching art history. Artists must be able to talk and write about their own work, and to think about other artists' work in relation to their own. Many students find a great overlap between conceptualization and critical thinking about the art of their own time, and the critical choices involved in their own art making. Courses may occasionally be taught in the Art Institute, in the home of a collector, or in an artist's loft.
Students see original work and talk with artists of all kinds.
These trips offer a structured art historical experience in a foreign culture with sufficient freedom for students to explore, photograph, and sketch on their own. Foreign travel has always been one of the richest sources of inspiration for artists. Through team-teaching and sharing, faculty are constantly learning from one another. As teachers and advisers, they are available to students for response to and discussion of studio work. Students will find studio faculty teaching courses on issues in twentieth-century arts, and art history faculty giving critiques in the studios, bridging what might otherwise be an artificial gap between art history and art making.