Courses

This 3D foundations course will engage students in learning to articulate and dissect the elements of three-dimensional design. Using metal, wire, clay, wood and found objects, students will construct and fabricate three dimensional objects while developing an understanding of visual language and its power to tell a story or convey a message. 3D modeling software will be explored as a way to conceptualize ideas before creating them in physical media. Students will study examples of historical and contemporary artists and designers to provide context for their projects.

Understanding the basic techniques of drawing the human form is fundamental to an art education and is the emphasis of this class. Humans have been engaged in the act of self-representation since the beginning of time. The relationship artists have had with drawing the human body is complex and has been the subject of religious, philosophical and personal investigation for centuries. Concentrating on representational drawing techniques we will explore a variety of media and materials. Supplemented by lectures, readings and critiques, students will develop an understanding of both contemporary and historical approaches to drawing the human form.

Students will learn techniques used by Japanese potters, and those from around the world, to make vessels associated with the production and consumption of tea. Both handbuilding and wheel throwing processes will be explored throughout the term. We will investigate how Japanese pottery traditions, especially the Mingei “arts of the people” movement of the 1920s, have influenced contemporary ceramics practice in the United States and how cultural appropriation impacts arts practice. Special attention will be paid to the use of local materials from Carleton’s Arboretum as well as wood firing and traditional raku processes. Requires concurrent registration in ARTH 266.

In this course, students will explore the power of visual imagery to shape, reflect, and challenge societal perceptions of identity. Emphasizing a balance of technical skills, personal vision, and critical thinking, the course encourages students to develop their own photographic voice. Students will be challenged to question, explore, and express their own identities through photography. Throughout the course, students will apply their technical and critical thinking skills to create a major project centered on their identity. They will be introduced to photographers from around the world who challenge stereotypes and amplify underrepresented voices, offering inspiration and context for their work. Expected preparation: some familiarity with photography or art in general.

This course focuses on lost wax casting, 3D modeling and printing, and stone setting as methods to create jewelry and small sculptural objects in bronze and silver. Specific instruction will be given in the proper use of tools, torches, and other equipment, wax carving, and general metalsmithing techniques. Through the use of 3D modeling software and 3D printing, new technologies will expedite traditional processes allowing for a broad range of metalworking possibilities.

This course provides an introduction to the medium of watercolor painting and gouache (opaque water-based paint) on paper surfaces. Students will develop an understanding of basic color interactions and a wide spectrum of paint application strategies from meticulous refined brushwork to fluid, expressive markmaking. 

This course will introduce the basics of silkscreen, an art technique used to create everything from t-shirts and band posters to fine art. We will engage with different aspects of this artistic process to generate imagery, including color mixing, layering, combining analogue and digital output, as well as contextualize the historic and contemporary tradition of this art form. This course will emphasize creativity, artistic growth, and technical skill development.

This course will discuss principles of graphic design using a Risograph duplicator, a printing technology that operates similarly to both silkscreen printmaking and a copy machine. The Riso is used to create artwork, zines, and other artistic publications. We will examine creative possibilities for this technology, using both analog techniques and digital publishing software including Adobe Photoshop and Indesign to make printed imagery and narrative works like zines and artists books.

This course builds upon student’s prior introductory coursework in any printmaking media (Silkscreen, Relief, Intaglio, Risography, or Lithography). We will engage in further technical study in printmaking as well as pursue conceptual engagement in theory and readings relevant to the field. This course will emphasize student-directed learning and the integration of concept and media.

The integrative exercise for the studio arts major consists of an independent research project involving experimentation, reflection, and deep engagement in the production of a cohesive body of artwork. The comps process is designed to give students the opportunity to develop ideas over the course of a term with close advice and support of the studio faculty and fellow students. Class of 2025 the department highly recommends students take five credits of comps fall or winter term of the senior year and one credit in the spring term of the senior year. Class of 2026 will be required to take five credits of comps fall or winter term of the senior year and one credit in the spring term of senior year.

Staggering wealth inequality spurred by transformative technological innovation and unbridled corporate power. Political tumult fueled by backsliding civil rights legislation, disputed elections, and anti-immigrant sentiment. Culture wars. American imperialism. Such characteristics have increasingly fueled comparisons between the present day and the late-nineteenth century in the United States. The Gilded Age witnessed the flourishing of mass culture alongside the founding of many elite cultural organizations—museums, symphony halls, libraries—that still stand as preeminent civic institutions. With an occasional eye to the present, this seminar examines the art, architecture, and cultural history of the Gilded Age.

Between 1300 and 1600 depictions of witches, monsters, and demons moved from the margins of medieval manuscripts and the nooks of church architecture to the center of altarpieces and heart of princely collections. Although this diabolical imagery was extremely diverse, it came from one place: the mind of the Renaissance artist. This course examines how images that came from within were devised and fashioned into works of art. It considers why fantastical imagery that showcased the artist’s imagination was so highly valued during the Renaissance–a period typically associated with the rebirth of classical antiquity. Finally, it explores the connection between illusions, visions, dreams, and other visual phenomena that highlighted the potential malfunction of the mind, and artistic creation. Some of the artists discussed include, but are not limited to, Hieronymus Bosch, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci.

The Middle East participated in the global revolutionary moment at the turn of the century, when photography and print played a crucial role in the mobilization and memorization of political, social, and cultural change. This course examines a vast range of revolutionary images at the beginning of the twentieth century, their specific contexts, and expressions in the Middle East. The course also investigates the impact of the Digital Turn in Art History and the intricacies of digital exhibitions. The students contribute to a digital exhibition on comparative revolutions hosted by Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online in 2025-26.

Why did the naked human body become a central subject of Western art? What makes the representation of an unclad body "beautiful," and what makes it "erotic"? What types of bodies been portrayed in the history of art and what types of bodies have not? Who has been succesful in censoring the nude? Who been less succesful? These questions form the basis of this course which examines the history of the nude from antiquity to the present day.

This course is a survey of major artistic movements after 1945 as well as an introduction to significant tendencies in current art and craft production. The goal of this course is to develop a familiarity with the important debates, discussions, and critical issues facing artists today. By the end of the course, students will be able to relate their own work as cultural producers to these significant contemporary artistic developments. Students will read, write about, and discuss primary sources, artist statements, and theoretical essays covering a wide range of media with the ultimate goal of articulating their own artistic project. Not open to students who have previously take ARTH 240.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can support or subvert human intelligence and it affects art and art history already today. This course will connect existing discourses in art history and the history of photography to recent AI questions and themes, demonstrating that many topics, which appear novel, have in fact a long and complex history. We will focus on questions of ethics that affect both AI and art history, including ownership of images, surveillance, and the representation of race and gender, while also exploring possible uses of AI in art history, e.g. the detection of forgeries, and the curation of AI artworks.

This course focuses on modern art, the museum, and the politics of display and curation in the Middle East. It will examine the development of modern art in the Middle East and take a closer look at specific modern artists and avantgarde movements, including Osman Hamdi Bey, Kamal al-Mulk, Fahrelnissa Zeid, and the Iranian Saqqakhaneh movement. We will examine the institution of the museum and its history. Furthermore, we will explore how modern Middle Eastern art is presented in the Middle East versus the United States or Europe. The course will include guest lectures by curators.

This course will survey the history of ideal plans for the built urban environment. Particular attention will be given to examples from about 1850 to the present. Projects chosen by students will greatly influence the course content, but subjects likely to receive sustained attention include: Renaissance ideal cities, conceptions of public and private space, civic rituals, the industrial city, Baron Haussmann’s renovations of Paris, suburbanization, the Garden City movement, zoning legislation, Le Corbusier’s Ville Contemporaine, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City, New Urbanism and urban renewal, and planned capitals such as Brasília, Canberra, Chandigarh, and Washington, D.C.

This course will examine the history and aesthetics of the tea ceremony in Japan (chanoyu). It will focus on the types of objects produced for use in the Japanese tea ceremony from the fifteenth century through the present. Themes to be explored include: the relationship of social status and politics to the development of chanoyu; the religious dimensions of the tea ceremony; gender roles of tea practitioners; nationalist appropriation of the tea ceremony and its relationship to the mingei movement in the twentieth century; and the international promotion of the Japanese tea ceremony post-WWII. Requires concurrent registration in ARTS 236.

This course explores the evolution of the museum from the Enlightenment to the present day. It questions the role of the curator and of audiences, strategies for building public collections, the repatriation of objects, and codes of display in museums of all types. Theoretical readings and discussion-based formats are complemented by practical experience. Students will help organize an exhibition about art and math which will be on view at the Perlman Teaching Museum in winter 2026. The course will coincide with a conference on art and math organized by the Museum and the Mathematics and Statistics department in October 2024.

An intensive study of the nature of art history as an intellectual discipline and of the approaches scholars have taken to various art historical problems. Attention as well to principles of current art historical research and writing. Recommended for juniors who have declared art history as a major or a minor.

Why did Renaissance artists produce hundreds of paintings of the Christ Child touching his genitals or presenting his genitals to someone, for instance his mother the Virgin Mary, inside the picture? Why did images of the dead Christ emphasize or exaggerate Jesus’s genitalia? And why were these phallic features of Renaissance religious painting not openly discussed and debated in art historical scholarship until 1983? These questions are at the heart of this course. In order to answer them we will examine the art critic Leo Steinberg’s groundbreaking book, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion (1983) and the dramatic responses Steinberg’s book engendered.