The Department of Art History and Art offers opportunities to study art history, to participate in a broad range of studio offerings and to engage in pre-professional museum training. The Bachelor of Arts degree is granted in art history and in pre-architecture. In addition, the department offers graduate programs leading to the degrees of Master of Arts in art history, in art history and museum studies; and the Doctor of Philosophy in art history.

All art programs are considerably enhanced by close cooperation with and access to the facilities of cultural institutions located in University Circle, in particular The Cleveland Museum of ArtThe Cleveland Institute of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland.

The Cleveland Museum of Art/CWRU Art History Program has been in existence since 1967. The museum’s curators serve as adjunct faculty, and graduate research projects under their direction often result in exhibitions and publications. The museum Studies course and internships provide experience in curatorial practices, connoisseurship, conservation, design, and museum education, and the program has a history of producing leaders in the museum field. Graduate students are exposed to both traditional and newer theoretically based art historical approaches in classes taught by faculty renowned for their expertise in a diversity of fields.

News

Professor Elina Gertsman Awarded Distinguished University Professor at Convocation

Congratulations to our very own Professor Elina Gertsman for her appointment as Distinguished University Professor, the highest distinction granted to faculty at CWRU. Professor Gertsman is not only the youngest faculty member at CWRU to ever be awarded this title—she is also the first professor from our department and the second woman in all of the humanities. Read more and see more photos by clicking below!

Reed O’Mara receives the Getty Curatorial Internship

Fourth-year PhD candidate in medieval art and Mellon Fellow Reed O’Mara will begin working as the curatorial intern in the Department of Manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum this fall. The Getty houses one of the leading medieval manuscript collections in the United States, and the graduate internship program offers participants hands-on experience with exhibition planning, objects research, and museum work. One of the manuscripts central to Reed’s dissertation on Jewish illuminated manuscripts, the Rothschild Pentateuch, is housed at the Getty. It is an extraordinary achievement, especially so because this same internship was held by our very own Sam Truman a year ago. Congratulations, Reed!

GAMS Book Club

GAMS will be gathering at BottleHouse Brewery on Wednesday, March 20 at 6:00 PM to discuss Umberto Eco’s acclaimed novel: The Name of the Rose. Please come prepared to discuss the book!

Cecily Hughes, second-year PhD student in medieval art, is delighted to be a recipient of one of this year's Cuttler Graduate Student Travel Grants from the Midwest Art Historical Society (MAHS). Cecily will be using the funds to attend the 50th Annual MAHS Annual Meeting in Chicago this spring,...

Congratulations to Maddy Fox and Vivian Lewis!

Congratulations to undergraduate seniors, Maddy Fox and Vivian Lewis, whose papers have been accepted for the 2024 SUNY New Paltz Art History Symposium from a highly competitive pool. Maddy’s paper, “The Adoption of Aesthetics: Borrowing Byzantium and Looking West in the Russian Romanesque,” seeks to address and expand the notion of amalgamation between the Byzantine and European tradition in Slavic architecture during the 12th century. Vivian’s paper focuses on Madox Brown’s Cordelia Parting from her Sisters and discusses Pre-Raphaelite social commentary about Victorian values; in 2023 it won an award for the best undergraduate art history paper. The conference sessions will be held in April via Zoom.

Julius Fund Lecture in Byzantine Art: Dr. Helen Evans, “Coming Alive: a Quarter-Century of Byzantine Art History”

Please join us for the Julius Fund Lecture in Byzantine Art on March 22, at the Cleveland Museum of Art. This year's speaker, Dr. Helen Evans, Mary and Michael Jaharis Curator Emerita in Byzantine Art, will discuss her decades of experience presenting Byzantine art to the public at the...

Professors Gertsman and Benay Finalists for 2023-2024 John S. Diekhoff Award

Congratulations to professors Elina Gertsman and Erin Benay, who have been selected as finalists for the 2023-2024 John S. Diekhoff Award for Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring/Teaching. The award, created in 1978, recognizes exceptional contributions to graduate student education at CWRU through exemplary advising, teaching, and mentoring.  Up to four...

Fuse: Museum to Studio Connections

On January 27th, CWRU graduate students and faculty joined Cleveland Museum of Art curators and conservators at the Cleveland Institute of Art to learn about champlevé enamel from Cleveland-based contemporary jeweler and enamelist Ariella Har-Even firsthand. This initiative was coordinated by Ariella and Reed O’Mara, a PhD candidate in...

This weekend, Rebekkah Hart, second-year PhD student in medieval art, presented a talk entitled “The Lithic and the Liquid in the Virgin’s Womb” at the 2024 Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Conference in Premodern Studies at the Newberry Library. Her talk focuses on Tilman Riemenschneider’s The Virgin of the Annunciation (c....

GAMS is delighted to announce its schedule of exciting February events! First, we will meet on Friday, Feb. 9 at 1:30 PM in Ingalls Library (Floor 2R of the Cleveland Museum of Art) to look at some amazing facsimiles of medieval manuscripts, including examples of Haggadahs, bestiaries, books of hours, Islamic manuscripts,...

Archaeological Institute of America annual meeting in Chicago

Professor Maggie Popkin and doctoral candidates Madeline Newquist, Clara Pinchbeck, and Arielle Suskin attended the recent Archaeological Institute of America annual meeting in Chicago. Congratulations to Madeline, Clara, and Arielle, who each gave a superb and very well-received paper!