Department ofArt History

Historical + interpretive studies
A Humanities Major in the Arts
Students can major or minor in art history, pursue a minor in architectural history, or work toward earning a museum studies certificate. Students have the opportunity to hold internships or assistantships at Penn State’s Palmer Museum of Art, known particularly for its strong holdings in American, African American, and contemporary art.
Advanced studies with renowned scholars
Our M.A. and Ph.D. programs provide candidates with the opportunity to pursue advanced study directly with renowned scholars. The department’s faculty are internationally recognized scholars and critics known for their dedication to their students.
Contact + Connect
Research
Virtual/Material: Color/Pigment Graduate Workshop
The Department of Art History at Penn State University is seeking applications from doctoral students in art history and related disciplines for the week-long workshop, Virtual/Material : Color/Pigment.
Funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, this workshop will offer an integrated curriculum of Technical and Digital Art History via the special case history of color. Through a combination of seminars, demonstrations, and hands-on labs led by a distinguished faculty of scientists and historians, participants can expect to leave the workshop better equipped to understand historical colorants and their production as well as the ways in which digital cultures can distort or ameliorate historians’ approach to such colorants.
Art History awarded Mellon Foundation grant to develop and host Sawyer Seminar
The College of Arts and Architecture’s Department of Art History in collaboration with the College of Liberal Arts has been awarded $225,000 by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a Sawyer Seminar entitled “Transmission, Containment, Transformation: A Comparative Approach to Architecture and Contagion in Early Modern Cities.”

Degrees +
Certificates
News from A&A
Nancy Locke elected President of the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art
Nancy Locke, Associate Professor of Art History, has been elected President of the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art. Founded in 1993, AHNCA's goal is to foster dialogue and communication
University of Iowa art museum curator to present Dickson Lecture
Zolli a finalist for 2021 PROSE Award in Art History and Criticism
An anthology of essays co-edited by Daniel Zolli, The Art of Sculpture in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge U Press, 2020), was one of three finalists for the 2021 PROSE Award from the Association of American
Read MoreFaculty Spotlight
Amara Solari
Associate Professor of Art History
Amara Solari teaches courses in Latin American art from the pre-Columbian through the colonial period. Her research focuses on processes of cultural, visual, and theological interchange between indigenous groups and Spanish settlers of New Spain. She recently received a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of her research project, “Maya Christian Murals of Yucatán: Indigenous Catholicism in Early Modern New Spain,” which focuses on fragile religious murals painted by Christianized Maya artists in Yucatán, Mexico, between 1550 and 1750.

Our Facilities


Visual Resources Centre

Palmer Museum of Art

Borland Project Space
Alumni Spotlight

Alumni Spotlight
Kimberly Henrikson
B.A. in Art HistoryKimberly Henrikson is executive director at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking (Norwalk, CT) and president of the Print Club of New York. She is newsletter editor for the International Print Club Societies organization, and held a senior position at Artstor, where she managed training and support services for digital image licensing in higher ed and museum communities around the world.
