Rutgers University, New Brunswick Campus 

Strategically located on the Northeast Corridor between New York City and Philadelphia, Rutgers University’s Art History Department offers both M.A. and Ph.D. students an exceptional combination of an outstanding faculty, rigorous, imaginative scholarship, innovative critical approaches, a spectrum of cross-disciplinary programs, and professional opportunities.

Faculty

Our distinguished faculty offers an intellectually rigorous and theoretically sophisticated program of study.  The faculty comprises fifteen full-time members whose research interests and teaching span all periods of Western, Sub-Saharan and Asian Art. We have a uniquely strong cluster of faculty offering graduate training in the areas of modern Europe and the Americas, Medieval art and architecture, Italian Studies from Ancient through Baroque, contemporary Latin America, South Asia, and Russian, Soviet and Eastern Europe art and architecture. 

Global Research

The increasingly global and interdisciplinary scope of the department has fostered new collaborative research in fields such as gender and women’s studies, visual culture, the history of science and medicine, and the history of photography. Many faculty and students have been actively involved with the vital research institutes and programs within Rutgers.

Consortium Connections

Taking full advantage of the great museums, galleries and academic institutions in the northeast, our students benefit from internships in the New York/New Jersey/Philadelphia area and from a consortium of art history programs that allows our PhD students to register for graduate courses at Columbia University, Fordham University, The Graduate Center at CUNY, the Institute of Fine Arts, The New School, New York University, SUNY at Stony Brook, Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Interdisciplinary Research Centers And Interdepartmental Collaborations

Faculty and graduate students in the department have been actively involved with interdisciplinary centers, including the Center for Cultural Analysis, the British Studies Center, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Institute for Research on Women, the Center for Historical Analysis, and the Global Asias Initiative.

They have been particularly active in facilitating the ongoing success of The Developing Room, a working group sponsored through the Center for Cultural Analysis, that has brought together scholars at Rutgers and from elsewhere whose research and teaching engages with the histories, theories, and practices of photography.

In addition, faculty and students often engage broadly with the departments of Latino and Caribbean StudiesWomen's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Italian Studies; American Studies; History; and Asian Languages and Cultures; and also with the programs in Global Medieval Studies and South Asian Studies.

Degrees and Certificate Programs

Over its forty-four year history as the Rutgers Art History Department, the graduate program has awarded over seventy-five Doctoral and about one hundred and fifty Master’s degrees. For the past two decades, many students have also pursued a certificate in Curatorial Studies, Historic Preservation and can now also obtain an Architectural Studies Certificate.

Funding Opportunities

Students admitted into the Ph D. program usually are awarded a funding package which includes a combination of fellowships and teaching assistantships. Additional research assistantships may be available through the Norton Dodge Collection of Soviet Non-Conformist Art. Both the department and the graduate school also provide opportunities to apply for additional funding to support conference travel, summer research, and dissertation completion. 

Our doctoral students have been very successful in securing external grant and foundation funding for their dissertation travel, research, and writing. A selection of the honors recently awarded includes: 

  • Two different Kress Institutional Fellowships for study at the Hertziana Library in Rome
  • Fulbright Fellowships to Austria, Estonia, Germany, Italy, and Moscow
  • The Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD)
  • The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London
  • The  INHA (Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art); and
  • Residential fellowships at the Smithsonian Institution
  • Residential fellowships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

We are unfortunately unable to promise financial support for M.A. students.

Art History Graduate Student Association (AHSGO)

The Art History Graduate Student Association (AHSGO) also offer students many opportunities to engage and organize a wide range of graduate student symposia, as well as international conferences. The Art History Graduate Student Organization arranges a Distinguished Speakers Series each year, complemented by the annual Sydney Jacobs Lecture in American Art and the newly inaugurated Edwin L. Weisl Lecture in Early Modern Art and Architecture.

Rutgers Art Review

The Rutgers Art Review is the oldest journal of graduate scholarship in Art History in the country. It is published annually and produced entirely by graduate students, Program faculty and students have repeatedly won competitive awards from the School of Graduate Studies, as well as national and international awards, for distinction in both teaching and research. 

Rutgers Art Library

Graduate students make frequent use of the Rutgers Art Library, which is located conveniently next to the department's main office in historic Voorhees Hall. Housed in a new building since 1992, the Art Library not only supports research and instructional needs, but also has been an active partner in co-sponsoring cultural events, lectures and exhibitions.

With its staff of graduate students under the Director’s supervision and in an expanded facility since 1993, the Visual Resources Collection is using Luna Insight software in collaboration with the University Libraries to make huge image-bases available for instruction throughout the university.  A new Sensors Lab in the department, fully equipped thanks to a generous gift from Sensors Inc., allows students to prepare and deliver digital presentations.

Zimmerli Museum

Program faculty and students closely collaborate with The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Museum on exhibitions and research. Through the new museum initiative ArtReach, students present lectures on art to the wider community. 

Alumni/Alumnae

Many alumni/ae currently hold academic and/or curatorial appointments at distinguished institutions, among them Duke, Universities of Iowa, North Carolina, and Houston, John Carroll University, Pepperdine University, Boston College, Dartmouth College, Kenyon College, and the Metropolitan Museum, Pierpont Morgan Library, Hunterdon Museum of Art, and Art Institute of Chicago; other alumni/ae enjoy positions in the commercial art world with Christie’s, Johnson and Johnson, and Wildenstein & Co.