BA in Art History
Our program is committed to exploring the visual arts as tools for exploring and decoding culture.
We offer art history courses on painting, sculpture, performance art, graphic arts, architecture, photography and decorative arts as ways to investigate today’s broad and immersive visual world.
Students will have the chance to explore traditional media such as painting, as well as architecture and digital media. A global approach to art history allows UB students to explore thematic elements of the fabric of visual culture such as taste and patronage, myth and narrative, gender and race, and intercultural relations.
Faculty members use a diverse range of methodological approaches to help students master the necessary tools and knowledge to understand our visual world.
Courses are offered from ancient to contemporary art history, with specific attention to social history, gender, sexuality and race, post-colonialism, and the context of history and politics.
Academic Opportunities
- Visiting Artists and Speaker Series: The Department of Art regularly invites artists, critics, historians and designers to participate in the Department of Art Speaker Series, the Leslie-Lohman Queer Art Lecture Series, classroom lectures and critiques.
- Curatorial Opportunities: Students have opportunities to curate exhibitions at numerous art spaces, such as UB Art Galleries and The Project Space in the Center for the Arts.
- Buffalo Metropolitan Area: Buffalo is home to diverse grassroots and alternative spaces dedicated to new and experimental genres. These spaces complement larger institutions such as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Burchfield Penney Art Center. Toronto, a ninety-minute drive from Buffalo, is the largest metropolitan area in Canada. It has hundreds of alternative spaces and commercial art galleries including the Power Plant and the Ontario Gallery of Art.
- Study Abroad: Students interested in study abroad have the opportunity to participate in numerous art-oriented programs around the globe. The Department of Art encourages majors to consider a junior year study abroad program. For more information, visit the College of Arts and Sciences Study Abroad page.
Scholarships and Financial Support
Art Departmental scholarships up to $2,000 are available to currently enrolled art majors.
One four-year scholarship covering all resident tuition and fees, minus any other aid received, is available to an undergraduate Honors student in the creative or performing arts. To be considered, students must have an unweighted high school average of at least 90 and a combined SAT critical reading and math score of at least 1230 or an ACT score of at least 27. A personal interview and a separate scholarship application are required.
Contact the Honors College to request an application.
Come see for yourself what the Department of Art at UB has to offer you.
