Art History examines the wide range of things that people have made and looked at and endowed with meaning - from the imposing facade of an imperial palace, to the colorful glory of stained glass or an oil painting, to an artist's intimate sketches. The discipline encompasses the study of painting, sculpture, decorative arts, the graphic media, and architecture, as well as an extensive variety of visual forms that run far afield of the traditional territory of "art" itself (for example, advertising, or ritual and ceremony, household furnishings, or popular entertainment). Students of art history become conversant with the world's cultures and develop skills in visual analysis in order to understand how images, objects, and built environments communicate. They also learn to employ a broad selection of interpretive methodologies.

Among the questions art historians ask are:

• How do different cultures define art, the artist, and artistic quality?
• How do people construct an argument in paint or stone?
• How does one learn to look at and understand material objects produced by cultures other than one's own?
• How does art define or undermine ethical and political values?
• How does our understanding of a work change when it is removed from its original setting and placed in a private collection or a museum?
• How can we come to understand our own visual environment in new, more complex ways?

The Department of the History of Art at the University of Michigan is distinguished by its long-standing commitment to the study of diverse cultures from around the world and its emphasis on the close analysis of the visual arts in relation to their historical and cultural contexts

Many of our classes include field trips to museums and architectural sites, and hands-on work with original art objects and archival materials. Through careful work with original sources and a wide-ranging study of comparative cultures, our students learn to consider how art objects were understood in their own time and place, and how they continue to function in the contemporary world. In so doing, art history students become acute observers and interpreters of the visual environment.