Claim: Helen Gardner received a master's degree in 1918.

Helen Gardner -LRB- 1878 -- 1946 -RRB- was an American art historian and educator . Her Art Through the Ages remains a standard text for American art history classes .   Gardner was born in Manchester , New Hampshire and attended school in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago . In 1901 she graduated with a degree in classics from the University of Chicago .  After an interval as a teacher , she returned to the same university to study art history , and received a master 's degree in 1918 . In 1920 she began lecturing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago , where she would spend the rest of her career , with the exception of short appointments at UCLA and the University of Chicago .   In 1919 , she became the head of the photograph and lantern-slides department at the Ryerson Library of the Art Institute of Chicago . The next year she started to teach an art history course at the School of the Art Institute . In 1922 , she made the choice to resign her position at the library to spare more time for teaching . From the frustration of not being able to find a comprehensive textbook that had a broad enough coverage in art history , she resolved the problem by writing such book herself , which resulted in a popular art history textbook used for decades , Art Through the Ages .   Her major work , Art Through the Ages -LRB- 1926 -RRB- , was the first single-volume textbook to cover the entire range of art history from a global perspective . Frequently revised , it remains a standard textbook at American schools and universities . In 1932 she also published Understanding the Arts , an art appreciation text directed toward educators . For both volumes , the analytical drawings were supplied by artist Kathleen Blackshear . In 1936 , she published a second edition of Art Through the Ages , with its content expanded .   In 1946 , aged 68 , she died due to cancer . However , despite her illness before her death , she remained in advisory capacity at the Art Institute .