Bachelor of Arts [B.A] [Art History and Museum Studies] From Radford University

By its very nature, art history is interdisciplinary and as an undergraduate degree, it is good preparation for the pursuit of a graduate degree in any area of the humanities. It is especially excellent as preparation for further study in the area of museums, art therapy, and degrees in arts restoration and curatorial studies. At the undergraduate level, students with the degrees in art history may find employment in galleries, libraries, and museums.

Radford University?s program is unique in that it gives you the opportunity to concentrate in either pre-modern or modern areas of art history, it is one of the few universities in Virginia to offer museum studies courses at the undergraduate level, and the program has enough flexibility in credit hours for you to pursue courses in an area of the studio arts or to minor in another discipline such as history or literature or business.

In addition to courses required for all students in the art department (basic art foundations and the art history survey), you will take some of the following courses: Art outside the Western Tradition (focus changes: may be Islamic, East Indian, Chinese art, and other topics); Museum History I: Cabinets of Curiosity; courses in Ancient/classical art history, medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art history, 20th century and contemporary art history, the history of photographic media, the history of exhibitions and exhibition design, and special topics courses in the history of the book, American women in art, and other topics relevant to the interests and academic goals of students in the program and the art department.

Most of your classes will have a mixture of art history, studio and graphic design majors; some of your classes will also have graduate students in them. Many of the period-related courses involve making replications of masterpieces of art and analyzing the replication as a means of exploring and studying technique and composition in historic works of art.

Students in the program get experience in making professional presentations through participation in undergraduate conferences held at other universities in Virginia and in RU symposia.

Because the program is small, art history students get to know one another and to work individually with their professors. The art history faculty is proud of its publication, conference and award-winning history ? individually they have presented papers in Scotland, Greece and Russia, and their research and travel experiences give them first-hand knowledge of the subjects they teach.