The Art History major offers students not simply a knowledge of the broad scope of artistic production over the course of human history, but also an understanding of the complex relationship between art and culture. One central learning objective is to encourage students to answer a deceptively simple question: Why does a work of art look the way it looks? The answers can often be found by examining historical context, artistic intention, audience, patronage, iconography, material, technique, and many other issues that students must be taught to recognize. Ultimately, the study of art history nurtures a mode of critical thinking that depends on visual analysis and focuses on the interpretation of images.

There are three levels of courses, with specific skills targeted to these levels. 100-level courses emphasize core skills that enable students to analyze art and related works of visual culture according to three rubrics:

Genre/type: Students should (a) know the traditional aims and conventions of the major types or genres of work produced in the historical and regional contexts covered by the course (e.g. Renaissance status portraits, Gothic Cathedrals); and (b) be able to articulate how a given work sustains, transforms, or breaks those conventions in the pursuit of its particular aims.

Form/style: Students should (a) thoroughly and accurately perceive the media, techniques, and formal elements of a given work (composition, texture, scale, etc.); (b) use appropriate technical vocabulary for describing those media, techniques, and formal elements (contrapposto, nave, painterly brushwork); and (c) relate those formal/stylistic elements to the contextual meaning/purpose and expressive content of the work.

Context: Students should (a) relate works to the ideas and practices of their original contexts (social, cultural, political, religious, etc.); and (b) account for how a given work sought to affect or influence the ideas and practices of the culture in which it was produced.

Courses at the 200 and 300 level usually address a narrower time period and/or cultural area, and allow for deeper consideration of context and more thorough analysis of individual works of art. Primary sources and scholarly secondary sources are typically introduced into the curriculum. Assignments may require research and/or critical thinking skills. A higher level of achievement in the core skills introduced in 100-level courses is expected, perhaps especially in the area of contextual analysis.

Courses at the 400 and 500 level continue to develop the core skills above and add:

Research skills: Students should (a) be able to use a variety of research resources, including libraries, online scholarly databases (such as JSTOR), and online image databases (such as ARTstor); and (b) be conversant with any of the major citation formats (MLA, Chicago, etc).

Critical thinking: Students should be able to (a) distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources of information; (b) summarize differing arguments about and/or approaches to the material; and (c) evaluate those arguments/approaches based on evidence and/or instrumentality.