Art History, B.A.
Capstone and honors
Capstone
Every art history major completes the Visual and Performing Arts Capstone in the fall of senior year. For art history students, this group project typically involves research in primary sources, writing, and public presentation — a rehearsal for graduate study, museum work, or any career that requires sustained scholarly argument and working across teams. Students with a GPA of 3.4 or higher may pursue the honors thesis as well.
Honors
Students with a GPA of 3.4 or higher may apply to the art history honors program during their junior year. Honors students work closely with a faculty advisor to develop an original thesis on a topic of their choosing — a significant piece of independent scholarship completed over two semesters.
Recent thesis topics give a sense of the range:
“The Nation Which Rejects the Home”: Katherine Dreier and a New Museum for the American Home
The Birth of a Venetian Venus: From the Page to the Painting
Queer Relationality: Ray Johnson’s Silhouettes as Glyphs, Dumps, Letters and Holes
The Triumph of Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Black Self in Conflict with Modernity
Primitivist Nostalgia and Postwar Solitude: The Emotionalism of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s 1924 Umbra Vitae Woodcuts
Connoisseurship 101: An Exercise in Attribution and Understanding in the Worcester Art Museum’s “Antonio Montalvo’s Wife and One of His Sons”
The Temple at Antiochia ad Cragum: An Examination of Roman Imperial Architectural Mouldings
