The discipline of art history and field of visual culture studies move across a spectrum of social and historical contexts and conceptual frameworks. Students taking courses in AHVCS focus on histories of artistic production and material culture. They investigate the lives of images, artifacts, and built environments, and consider how visual practices have shaped values, experience, identity and action.
Whitman College offers major and minor study programs in art history and visual culture studies. Both programs present a flexible and rigorous curriculum that incorporates perspectives from other fields, including Environmental Studies, Asian Studies, Race and Ethnic Studies, and German Studies. Our courses enable students to explore, understand and evaluate topics as diverse as the form and function of early Indo-Islamic architecture, European design theory and production, art and urban revitalization, and decolonizing the museum. Major and minor students become familiar with the history and historiography of visual texts, and contemporary interdisciplinary approaches to the study of representation in its multiple forms.
Annotations & Announcements
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Whitman Archivists and Art Historians Conserve the Confluence Project
May 16, 2019 • Read about AHVCS student Laura Rivale '19 and Prof. Matt Reynold's work archiving Maya Lin's environmental art.
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Top 11 Reasons to Major in Art History and Visual Culture Studies (2019 edition!)
May 13, 2019 • 11. You enjoyed ARTH 103: Introduction to Art History and Visual Culture Studies (i.e. looking at and writing about visual texts).
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2018 - 2019 AHVCS Roundup
April 22, 2019 • It's been a lively year in the study of art history and visual culture at Whitman. Highlights include visiting
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Curator of Palm Springs Art Museum visits Whitman
October 5, 2018 • Curator of Palm Springs Art Museum visits Whitman
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Groundbreaking Publication on 16th Century Indian Painting
September 12, 2018 • The research of Prof. Gulbransen was recently featured in Artibus Asiae, a leading peer-reviewed Asian art journal.