What Can You Do With An Art History Degree?
"I have always had a love for art, its materiality, history, and especially its cultural impact both past and present. Taking art history classes was an essential part to my understanding of how all these aspects merge together to create the vast number of experiences and stories that art and objects have to tell, especially in my line of work conserving library and archives collections. You need a complete understanding of art as living history, and art history certainly provided that perspective."
–Jess Ortegon
Alumni Perspectives
"I work in sales for an art tech company, [Artsy]. It's been an interesting journey, but I'm beyond happy with where I've landed, and could not have gotten here without my degree in art history. My general workday involves researching gallery prospects to join Artsy's online marketplace, by perusing gallery websites, learning about their represented artists, and having conversations with gallery owners. 'For the love of art' is one of Artsy's main company values, and I feel lucky to work at a company that truly believes in the impactful power of art."
–Emma Romano
Why study art history at UConn?
We live in a visual world. But do you understand what you are seeing? How can you see with more historical context? More agency? How can you transform this visual world? With Art History.
UConn's Art History program focuses on art’s transformative capacity to change the way we see and understand the world. We emphasize not only the aesthetic and historical meanings of art, visual culture, and objects, but also their ability to address issues of social justice and social significance in our increasingly visual world.
Let Art History give you the core skills—critical seeing, thinking, and writing—to seeing a better world.
Experience Infinite Job Opportunities in the Art History Sector
There is no field, no career, no area of work that is not enhanced by a degree in Art History. We give you the skills to see, critique, engage, and communicate—skills needed in all walks of life.
Many of our students go on to professions in the arts: curatorships, art conservation, gallery and museum directorships and management, arts administration, art critics, non-profit work. Yet most take the skills gained through their study of Art History to pursue careers in areas such as law, healthcare, business, international relations, publishing, politics, and marketing.
Vision/Creativity/Leadership/Critical Voice:
These are the skills Art History gives you.
Meet Our Faculty
Elizabeth Athens
Assistant Professor of Art History
ELIZABETH.ATHENS@UCONN.EDU
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Check Out My Work
Select Publications
- Contributing author, "History of Early American Landscape Design" digital resource, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art.
- “Chaotic Life: Representing the Freshwater Polyp,” J18: A Journal of Eighteenth-Century Art and Culture (Aug. 2016).
- “William Bartram’s Inimitable Picture: Representation as the Pursuit of Natural Knowledge,” Journal of Florida Studies 1:4 (Dec. 2015).
Newspaper/Radio/Other Media
- Alina Tugend, “Displaying, Not Hiding, the Reality of Slave Labor in Art,” New York Times, Oct. 23, 2019.
- Jason Daley, “Museums Tie Portraits to the Wealthy to their Slaveholding Pasts,” Smithsonian Magazine (June 20, 2018).
- Maria Garcia, “At the Worcester Art Museum, New Signs Tell Visitors Which Early American Subjects Benefited from Slavery,” WBUR, June 7, 2018.
- Sarah E. Bond, “Can Art Museums Help Illuminate Early American Connections to Slavery?” Hyperallergic, Apr. 25, 2018.
Alexis Boylan
Associate Professor of Art History with a joint-appointment in the Africana Studies Institute & Director of Academic Affairs, Humanities Institute
ALEXIS.BOYLAN@UCONN.EDU
(860) 486-3702
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Check Out My Work
Recent Videos:
Recent books:
- https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/visual-culture-1
- https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/furious-feminisms
- https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/ellen-emmet-rand-9781350189935/
Recent Articles:
- “Fashioning a Way Out of Black Pain,” Boston Review (August 28, 2020)
- “Hyman Bloom’s Messy Bodies,” Boston Review (February 21, 2020)
- “AI’s Human Problem,” Boston Review (December 13, 2019)
- “Race in Black and White,” Boston Review (June 7, 2019)
Robin Greeley
Associate Professor of Art History
ROBIN.GREELEY@UCONN.EDU
(860) 486-3930
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Check Out My Work
Select Publications
- “Participatory Art at the Border,” in The Future is LatinX, ed. Yulia Tikhanova (Willimantic: Eastern Connecticut State University, 2020): 15-19.
- "Enrique Chagoya," Bomb Magazine (Winter 2001)
- "Witnessing Revolution, Forging a Nation,” in Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism 1910-1950, eds. Renato González Mello et al, (New Haven: Yale University Press/Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2016), 2-9.
Kathryn Moore
Assistant Professor of Art History
KATHRYN.MOORE@UCONN.EDU
(860) 486-3930
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Michael Orwicz
Associate Professor of Art History
MICHAEL.ORWICZ@UCONN.EDU
(860) 486-2560
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