History of Art and Design
Pratt Institute is an exceptional place to study the history of art and design. Our landmarked campus attracts leading artists, designers, historians, and theorists and is only minutes from the studios, galleries, private collections, libraries, and museums that make New York a premier center of art and design.
Our faculty is composed of distinguished scholars and mentors who focus on the intellectual and professional growth of our students. They bring a broad range of expertise and different methodologies to the classroom. Their expertise, dedication, and original thinking are evident in our curriculum and, most importantly, are reflected in the quality of our students’ work.
Students come from a wide range of backgrounds and leave with knowledge and experience that will inform and support their careers for many years.
Connections with other departments in all areas of fine arts and design—interior, industrial, communications, and fashion—offer a unique platform for an interaction between practitioners and theoreticians. Our students witness the making of art and design firsthand.
The History of Art and Design Department offers exciting lectures and seminars on a wide range of approaches. Our ongoing relationships with various cultural organizations in the city enrich the graduate experience. Students have access to behind-the-scenes tours, can learn from professionals working in various related fields, and are able to participate in exhibition opportunities.
The History of Art and Design Department offers the MA degree, requiring 36 credits, and a thesis. In addition, a dual-degree (total of 60 credits) is offered with Library and Information Science, leading to MA/MS degrees.
The History of Art and Design with Fine Arts (total 75 credits) is not open to new students for fall 2019 and fall 2020.
Chair
Sarah Lictman
Assistant Chair
Evan Neely, PhD
Assistant to the Chair
Jill Song
Office
Tel: 718.636.3598
ha@pratt.edu
www.pratt.edu/history-of-art-design-grad
Sonya Abrego
Visiting Assistant Professor
M.Phil. Decorative Arts, Design History and Material Culture Studies; Ph.D., Bard Graduate Center.
Kira Albinsky
Visiting Instructor
B.A., Boston College; M.A., Ph.D. candidate, Rutgers University.
Karen Bachmann
Visiting Assistant Professor
B.F.A. Sculpture/Jewelry, Pratt Institute; M.A. History of Art, Purchase College, SUNY.
Lisa Banner
Visiting Associate Professor
B.A., Princeton University; Ph.D., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
Ágnes Berecz
Visiting Assistant Professor
Ph.D., Université Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne).
Corey D’Augustine
Visiting Assistant Professor
B.A. Visual Arts and Biochemistry, Oberlin College; M.A. Art History, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
Ed DeCarbo
Adjunct Associate Professor, CCE
M.A., University of Chicago; M.A., Ph.D., Indiana University.
John Decker
Chair
M.A., Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara.
Peter De Staebler
Assistant Professor
A.B., Bowdoin College; M.A., Ph.D., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
Eva Díaz
Associate Professor
M.A., Ph.D., Princeton University.
Mary Douglas Edwards
Adjunct Professor, CCE
M.L.S., M.A., Ph.D., Columbia University.
Diana Gisolfi
Professor
B.A., Radcliffe/Harvard; M.A., Ph.D., University of Chicago.
Frima Fox Hofrichter
Professor
M.A., Hunter College; Ph.D., Rutgers University.
Heather Horton
Visiting Assistant Professor
B.A., DePauw University; M.A., Ph.D., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
Susan Karnet
Visiting Instructor
B.F.A., School of Visual Arts; M.F.A., Hunter College, CUNY.
Dara Kiese
Visiting Assistant Professor
B.A. Modern History, University of Minnesota; M.Phil., Ph.D. Art History, The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Joseph Reid Kopta
Visiting Instructor
B.F.A., M.S., Pratt Institute; Ph.D. candidate, Temple University.
Gayle Rodda Kurtz
Adjunct Associate Professor
B.A., Stanford University; M.A., Hunter College; Ph.D., The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Tiffany Lambert
Visiting Instructor
Thomas La Padula
Adjunct Professor
B.F.A., Parsons The New School for Design; M.F.A., Syracuse University.
Anca Lasc
Assistant Professor
B.A. History and Theory of Art and Literature, Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany; M.A., Ph.D., University of Southern California.
Michele Licalsi
Visiting Assistant Professor
B.A., M.A., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
Elizabeth Meggs
Visiting Assistant Professor
B.F.A. Communications Arts and Design, Illustration, Virginia Commonwealth University.
Juan Monroy
Visiting Assistant Professor
B.A. Film Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara; M.A., Ph.D., Cinema Studies, New York University.
Marsha Morton
Professor
M.A., University of Chicago; Ph.D., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
Evan Neely
Assistant Chair; Adjunct Assistant Professor
B.F.A. Fine Arts, Parsons The New School for Design; M.Phil., M.A., Ph.D. Art History, Columbia University.
Caterina Pierre
Visiting Associate Professor
B.A., Brooklyn College, CUNY; M.A., Hunter College, CUNY; M.Phil., Ph.D., The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Joyce Polistena
Adjunct Professor, CCE
M.A. Art History, Hunter College; Ph.D., M. Phil., The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Elena Rossi-Snook
Visiting Assistant Professor
B.A. Cinema, SUNY Binghamton; M.A. Film Archiving, University of East Anglia.
Ann Schoenfeld
Adjunct Assistant Professor
M.A., University of Chicago; Ph.D., The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Elizabeth St. George
Visiting Instructor
B.A., Kent State University; M.A., Ph.D. candidate, Bard Graduate Center.
Adédoyin Teriba
Visiting Assistant Professor
B.Arch., Federal University of Technology, Minna, Nigeria; M.Arch., University of Oklahoma; M.A., Ph.D. candidate, Princeton University.
Alice Walkiewicz
Visiting Instructor
B.A., University of Kansas; M.Phil., Ph.D. candidate, The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Bor-Hua Wang
Adjunct Assistant Professor
M.A., University of Kansas; Ph.D., Columbia University.
Sarah Wilkins
Visiting Assistant Professor
B.A., Vanderbilt University; M.S., Pratt Institute; Ph.D., Rutgers University.
Karyn Zieve
Visiting Assistant Professor
B.A., Wellesley College; M.A., University of Pennsylvania; Ph.D., Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
HAD-501 Survey of Design History, 1750 to The Present - (3 Credits)
This lecture course concentrates on the history of mass produced designs, from the Industrial Revolution to the present, with an emphasis on the general tendencies of the periods and the social contexts in which the designs were conceived. Examples representing links between design disciplines are compared and analyzed for a better understanding of the cross influences and interactions taking place.
HAD-551 Issues in Design History - (3 Credits)
This course provides both advanced undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to study in depth a particular research problem or theme in design history. The format used will be primarily lectures with follow-up discussions. The course topics will vary as determined by the instructor and the department chair.
HAD-561 Special Topic: Exhibition - (1 Credit)
Students analyze current exhibition in terms of its musicological approach. Field trips to the exhibition provide an in-depth understanding of the objects, the subject and the museum's curator's underlying concept in structuring the show. Alternative modes of organizing the exhibition are considered and discussed in class. This course can be linked to other related theoretical or practical courses to provide insight into an actual exhibition.
HAD-590I Art History of Venice - (3 Credits)
On-site study of painting, architecture, sculpture, and drawing of Venice is the prime purpose of this course. Classes held on-site will alternate with lectures and discussions that place the material in its art historical context. Study of ancient Byzantine and Gothic art in Venice will precede discussion of Renaissance art with its rich crosscurrents of influence from Byzantium, Northern Europe and Central Italy. Technical innovations of Venetian Renaissance artists and later developments in the Baroque will be considered. Students will carry out visually-based assignments, including papers that analyze and compare art works in Venice. The Marciana Library will serve as a resource.
HAD-600I Materials & Techniques of Venetian Art (Venice) - (3 Credits)
Students participating in Pratt in Venice are introduced to issues and bibliography relating to this subject. Through the good offices of the Universita Internazaionale dell'Arte, students visit the main restoration studio of the Soprintendenza in Venice as well as current restoration sites and the laboratory of the Kress Foundation. The Cini Foundation Library provides abundant support. Each participant selects a problem in Venetian materials and techniques to study through early descriptions and restorers' journals and, to the extent possible, experiments with the material/technique in the studio. This course may be taken twice (in succeeding summers) by degree candidates in art history.
HAD-602 Art Historical Theory and Methodology - (3 Credits)
Students are introduced to key figures in the history of art and design via their writings. Further readings for discussion exemplify a range of methodologies represented in the discipline and also chronological and geographical range. Students are expected to participate actively and critically in the weekly discussions. An annotated bibliography of a key scholar or method and a catalogue raisonme of an object in Pratt's permanent collection complete the course requirements.
HAD-605 Thesis - (3 Credits)
Serves as a thesis course for the graduate student who minors in art history and for the master's candidate in art history. Proposed topics are submitted in writing to a faculty committee. After approval of the proposal, the student works on an individual basis with the appropriate faculty advisor. Theses conform to the requirements established by the Library and are filed there as well as with the Department of Art History.
HAD-606 Topics in Design History - (3 Credits)
In this seminar course, students study theories and concepts of design. Issues important to all fields of design will be discussed in the historical context based on original writings and theories of the most influential thinkers/ designers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Individual examples of design, including students' own designs, will be considered in relation to these theories. Field trips will provide opportunities to explore libraries and to apply the theories to practical examples.
HAD-609 History of Interior Design I - (2 Credits)
This course presents interior design in relation to its architectural context, from primitive and prehistoric beginnings to the Renaissance. Interior spaces, furniture and other interior elements in typical uses are studied. Class format includes slide lectures, seminar sessions, assigned reading and research assignments.
HAD-610 History of Interior Design II - (2 Credits)
This course presents interior design and its relationship to architecture from the eighteenth century to the present, with a special emphasis on design since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Furniture, textiles and other interior elements and related products in typical uses are studied. The leaders of the modern movement are examined in terms of their works, writing and theories. Class format includes slide lectures, seminar sessions, assigned reading and research assignments.
HAD-611 Picasso & Matisse, Artistic Dialogues - (3 Credits)
Follows the evolution of these two pioneers of modern art from their training to their late years. Students investigate topics such as the influence of Cezanne and the Nabis on Matisse; the importance of late Impressionism and Primitive art to Picasso; and the role of sculpture in the work of each artist.
HAD-613 History of Industrial Design - (3 Credits)
This course takes a critical approach to the history of industrial design through an exploration of objects, practices and practitioners within their social, cultural, economic, political and technological contexts. Three-hour classes will be primarily student-led through discussion, presentations, and group work.
HAD-616 Arts of the Northern Renaissance - (3 Credits)
This course examines painting in Flanders, France, The Netherlands, and Germany from 1400 to 1600. Focus will be on the development of new styles of representation and their implications for the iconography of painting, the effects of religious revolution on the practice of art and the outburst of iconoclasm, and the changes in the practice and marketing of art brought on by the early stages of the transition to a capitalist society.
HAD-620 Viewing and Constructing the Classical Body - (3 Credits)
Ancient societies were profoundly visual. Fewer images were available, so those that existed were more important. Representations of the human body played a central role within ancient visual arts, as the starting point for recognizing the self and differentiating from the other. This course looks at ancient Mediterranean representations of the human body: how those representations were constructed and functioned, how forms developed and changed, what they expressed, how they were looked at when new, how we have received them, and how see them today. We will explore ancient societies through how they represented bodies, whether drawn or modeled, mortal or divine, human or hybrid, idealized or realistic. We also recognize that the Mediterranean focus on the nude figure is atypical of the global experience and requires special explanation. We will begin with Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and continue through Ancient Greece and Rome up through the early Christian period. The class will include two museum visits and a structured research project and paper.
HAD-623 Topics in Dutch Art and Design - (3 Credits)
Graduate students will study a specific theme in the complex and vibrant world of Dutch Art in the 15th-17th centuries. The topic, introduced by the instructor, will follow a seminar format of oral and written presentations by students.
HAD-627 Color in Ancient Greece & Rome - (3 Credits)
Color was a critical aspect of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, counter to post-Renaissance chromophobia that sees ancient marble sculpture as plain white. We will look closely at polychromy of ancient sculptures, mineral pigments, their application and effects, and issues surrounding modern reconstructions. We will also examine other types of added color, such as fabric dyes and wall and panel paintings, as well as the vast world of inherent color, especially precious metals, marbles, gemstones, fibers, woods, and clays. In addition, we will consider color in other ancient cultures. This seminar includes an independent research project and museum visits.
HAD-630 Michelangelo and the Arts of the Renaissance - (3 Credits)
Students are introduced to topics and issues in Michelangelo studies. Through readings and discussions, students examine the religious, intellectual, and political climate in which Michelangelo lived and worked. Research topics are developed on themes chosen by the group.
HAD-631 Illuminating the Word, Medieval Manuscripts - (3 Credits)
This course explores the ways medieval manuscripts were produced and illuminated. Students study the stylistic evolution of manuscripts and their importance as a resource for understanding medieval painting. Changes in the choice of texts and subjects throughout the Middle Ages, and the artists' motivations, are other major areas of study.
HAD-632 Topics in Venetian Renaissance Art & Design - (3 Credits)
This course looks in depth at the visual riches of the Renaissance in Venice. An introduction to Venetian Renaissance culture and to late fifteenth and sixteenth century art and architecture from the Bellini, Coducci and Lombardi to Giorgione, Titian, Sansovino, Tintoretto, Veronese, Palladio is provided along with selected readings, followed by a quiz. Participants choose a focus for research and collaborate by sharing bibliographies. Each student selects a topic related to the focus and presents the results of research in a seminar report to the group and in a final written version of the report.
HAD-633 German Art and Culture: Romanticism To Expressionism - (3 Credits)
This course examines the development of art in Germany from the spiritualism of Romanticism (Caspar David Friedrich and the Nazarenes) to explorations of sexuality, Darwinian theory, and the unconscious (Arnold BOcklin and Max Klinger) during the emergence of a modern urban society in the Wilhelmine Empire. Topics to be considered include shifting definitions of national identity, responses to industrialization and socialism, and the interchange of art with music, literature, mythology and fairy tales, and philosophy. Popular visual culture as well as the fine arts will be emphasized.
HAD-634 Origins of Abstraction 1900-1930 - (3 Credits)
At the tum of the twentieth century, non-figurative imagery emerged for the first time in the history of art. This course explores the development of abstraction in art and theory in Europe and the United States from 1900 through the 1920s. Emphasis is placed on the defining moments of transition from representation to the non-objective within each artist's oeuvre. Abstraction will be considered in conjunction with essential inter-disciplinary influences from science, spiritualism, politics, music and dance, and folk and decorative arts.
HAD-635 Creating Exhibitions - (3 Credits)
This course offers an introduction to the process of planning, curating, execution, publicizing, and finding of art or design exhibitions. This course prepares the student for participation in small or large presentations of commercial or educational exhibitions within an organization or school, or in galleries, museums, or large commercial expositions and fairs.
HAD-636 Bernini and the Baroque - (3 Credits)
Gianlorenzo Bernini's (1598-1680) dynamic, innovative sculpture, monumental tombs and breathtaking architecture, will be the focus of this seminar. His work for the papacy and for private patrons formed the essence of the Roman Baroque. Competition in Rome with Borromini in architecture and Algardi in sculpture, among others and across Europe, will also be explored.
HAD-637 The Grotesque in Art and Visual Culture - (3 Credits)
This seminar will study cultural manifestations of the grotesque, monstrous, abnormal, and deviant throughout diverse historical periods in visual culture and the fine arts. Particular consideration will be given to the theoretical formulations of the concept which served as the aesthetic antipode to traditional association of art and beauty.
HAD-639 Mapping Art History - (3 Credits)
Instead of examining such areas as French eighteenth-century art, Song Dynasty painting, or Dutch seventeenth-century art, this course emphasizes different connections between cultures and centuries based on reconsidered or redrawn boundaries. Often it shows that bodies of water are a key factor in determining relationships. Such as approach is evident in international conferences devoted to the Mediterranean or the Indian Ocean or to trans-Atlantic exchanged. In this seminar students will look at maps and globes that show a growing knowledge of the world based on exploration. Navigation records and trade routes are vital to this inquiry. Cultural exchange developed also through colonization, missionaries, and conquest. Students will read and discuss texts that investigate these matters. Each student will research a specific case of cultural interaction, present this research to the group, and refine it in a final paper.
HAD-640 Aspects of Japanese Design - (3 Credits)
Students are introduced to Japanese deSigns of recent production in the fields of graphics, fashion, products, and interiors. These designs are investigated as examples of major aesthetic principles that have developed over the past millennia in Japan, and are still fundamental to the understanding of today's material culture in this Far-Eastern country. Thus, the social, philosophical, and religious history as reflected in Japanese designs of all ages are examined and discussed. In the end, students are led to actively interpret the deSigns from both historic and contemporary viewpoints. This course is open to graduate students only, but welcomes students from all majors.
HAD-641 Origins of Contemporary Communication Design - (3 Credits)
This course will investigate the relevance of major historical movements in relation to contemporary communications design practice, not simply as legacy, but as a means to understand the contexts and formal principles that drive design today. The course will cover major design concepts developed during the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
HAD-642 Performance Art:The Artist as Provocateur - (3 Credits)
Activist avant-garde artists have historically ignored national boundaries as well as aesthetic ones, taking regular people to be their audience and any subject or material under the sun to be appropriate to their means. Contemporary activist visual art performance practitioners view this avant-garde legacy as their own, incorporating musical, theatrical, literary, dance, film and technological elements in their work in order to address the pressing issues of our time. This course will focus on critical examples of performance art from the last century to today to analyze how artists have positioned themselves in relation to current standards of artistic production and developed techniques of provocation to activate the audience. Course work includes readings of primary and critical texts, class discussion, presentations, and a 15-page research paper, and will culminate in collaborative visual art performances to be presented collectively in small groups to the entire class.
HAD-643 Art of the USA: Visualizing Race, Religion, Class - (3 Credits)
This course will examine the intersection of artistic production and racial, social, and religious experience in the United States. A wide range of images and objects representing various artistic expressions as well as various nationalist symbols (e.g. \"Hawkeye\") and traditions (Puritanism) will be considered. Issues of expansionism (in the art of the West), the civil War and slavery (the Quadroon), ethnicity (Gilded Age hegemony), radicalism (20th-century Anarchist art) and racial stereotypes (Jim Crow, Mammy to Aunt Jemima) will figure prominently in our exploration of historical, theoretical and methodical interpretations of American art.
HAD-644 Design in the Age of Impressionism Expositions, 1851-2015 - (3 Credits)
This course examines European decorative arts and design during the second half of the nineteenth century, period that coincided with the rise to fame of the impressionist art movement. It reevaluates the artistic achievement and material culture of this oft-studied period in light of new modes of productions associated with a rapidly industrializing world.
HAD-645 Painting Modern Life in Nineteenth- Century Paris and the Provinces - (3 Credits)
This course will examine the development of the realist orientation of French Impressionism and the reactions against it by the Post-Impressionists. An emphasis will be places on the social, cultural, and political context as well as the construction of modernity in art and gender identity. The philosophical underpinnings of the movements are studied, as well as central tensions in late nineteenth-century France between urban secular society and rural traditions grounded in folk cultures and religious beliefs.
HAD-647 Dada and Surrealism - (3 Credits)
The seminar explores the histories of Dade and Surrealism as well as their enduring legacies in modern and contemporary art and visual culture. It situates the artistic practices and the politics of these two movements within the cultural production and geography of the historical avant-gardes and investigates them through a series of close readings that include theater, painting, photography, sound works, film and literature.
HAD-648 Consuming Design, From Pleasure to Politics - (3 Credits)
This course examines design from the point of view of its dissemination and reception in various historical contexts and geographical locations. It acknowledges that there is not just one audience for design; rather, the consumption, advertising and selling of designed objects has always differed in time and place based on socio-economic, political, cultural, or religious factors. We will examine design and its circulation in relation to medium and materiality, identity politics, including gender, sexuality, race, and class, the rise of the nation state, and the move towards cross-cultural networks of consumption. While the focus of the course will mostly be on Western and modern design consumption, we will juxtapose the conditions of its emergence in industrialized, capitalist societies against the circulation, reception and display of material culture objects in the early modern world and across a variety of geographical locations. Students are encouraged to purse research projects of their own choice and related to any period or geographical location, upon prior consultation with the instructor.
HAD-650 Materials, Techniques and Conservation - (3 Credits)
Historic materials and techniques in the various media are studied through the examination of examples, early descriptions and restorers' journals. Students experiment in various techniques that are not current practice and learn of the technology that allows individuals to analyze the materials and technique of a given artist or object. The expertise of restorers is included through classes held in the Brooklyn Museum and guest lecturers.
HAD-651 Problems in the History of Art & Design - (3 Credits)
Offered to graduate students and focused on the in-depth study of problems in design history. The seminar format of the course may also include lectures, class discussions, and student presentations. Course topics vary as determined by the instructor and the department chair.
HAD-652 Architecture & Landscape in the Ancient Americas - (3 Credits)
An investigation of the monumental architecture and urbanism of the PreColumbian civilizations of the Andes and Mesoamerica, with particular consideration to the relationship of the built environment to the natural landscape and the ways it served to reflect and reproduce social, political, and cosmological structures.
HAD-655 Topics in Islamic Art and Design - (3 Credits)
What makes a work of art \"Islamic\"? This seminar scrutinizes the artistic expressions of Islam spanning various regions, historical periods, and mediums, while also considering their worldwide impacts and contemporary interpretations. By encouraging a nuanced examination, it aims to develop a critical framework for discerning the multifaceted artistic traditions within Islamic societies globally, touching upon themes like gender representation; Orientalist perspectives in art; expressions of Arab, Iranian, and Turkish revolutions; colonial art styles; and the dynamics of the contemporary art market in the Gulf Region.
HAD-657 Buddhist Art and Architecture - (3 Credits)
This course is a comprehensive survey of Buddhist art and architecture from their emergence in the subcontinent in the 3rd century BCE to their evolution in Central, Southeast, and East Asia between the 5th and the 15th centuries CE. Art Is examined according to chronological developments, geographic expansions, and the traditional Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana divisions of Buddhism. Architectural monuments and artifacts inspired by Buddhist beliefs, including sculptures, paintings, calligraphy, murals, textiles, and ritual objects, are analyzed according to religious, philosophical, and art historical issues. We discuss them in their regional and pan-Asian socio-cultural contexts. Interdisciplinary issues are also considered, including Buddhist order and law, Buddhist world view and quantum physics, and current developments such as repatriation, physical analysis of objects with synchrotron radiation, and digital technologies used in conservation.
HAD-660 Crafting Modern Craft-History, Theory, Politics - (3 Credits)
This course thematically investigates issues in modern craft history and theory across different geographic regions and cultures, including changing definitions of craft; craft labor, production and economies; the accumulation and display of craft objects in private collections and museum displays; and the politics and purposes of craft at individual and collective levels. Questioning how craft has been positioned as lesser in relation to art and design since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, this course explores different definitions of craft used, particularly by cultures and groups that question, refute or resist dominant frameworks.
HAD-664 History of Interior Design - (3 Credits)
This course presents a synchronic investigation of interior design history through typological and thematic topics over time, place, and culture--examining political, economic, and social influences alongside spatial planning, scale, form, technology and materiality--in order to illuminate traditions and innovations as well as draw connections between societies and individuals. Attention to the field's latest critical accounts and historical research will allow for focus on underrepresented voices and environments.
HAD-665 History of Interior Design II - (3 Credits)
This course is the second in a two-semester sequence that presents the history of interior design from Antiquity to the present. Focusing on design since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century, it observes the relation between interiors and the social, political, and economic contexts in which they were born.
HAD-667 Gender and Sexuality in Interior and Fashion Design History - (3 Credits)
This course provides a historical understanding of the interplay between fashion and interiors as they have interacted with and influenced each other throughout time. Furniture makers around the world produced wide chairs mindful of ladies' spatially-expanding attires, while lower-back seats were designed to accommodate the towering hairdos often sported at the court of Marie Antoinette. Colorful robes were preferred to better set off their wearers against one particular background or another, while late nineteenth-century Gesamtkunstwerk theories dictated that female inhabitants - through their clothes and posture - become one with their interiors. Twentieth-century fashion designers are known for their interior decoration schemes, and many couture houses are now incorporating interior design offices. Daughters of Eve: Glamorized Femininity, Fashion, and Interiors from Versailles to Today attempts to understand the central role that style and glamor have played in every-day life from the Renaissance to today and to question long-held beliefs that have held decoration and physical adornment as 'minor arts,' subservient to architecture.
HAD-668 Leisure in the Empire City: Modernity And the Interior Architecture of Entertainment - (3 Credits)
This course introduces students to the new decorative themes and modern interior design practices developed in the public spaces of entertainment that were born in large cities such as Paris, London, Berlin, and New York beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century. From cafes and cabarets to restaurants, movie palaces, dance halls, and amusement parks, the residents of large metropolitan areas liked to party. We will explore the architecture and interior design of nightlife spaces in parallel with the glamorous architecture and interior displays of museums, hotels, railroad cars, and large shopping centers. Using New York as our laboratory, we will meet on campus for half of our classes while spending the other half in the city. Some of the sites that we will visit include: the Four Seasons restaurant, the Waldorf Astoria hotel, the Bergdorf Goodman department store, the Coney Island Museum, and the Radio City Music Hall.
HAD-669 Modern Latin American Design - (3 Credits)
This course explores major issues in modern Latin American design history through a number of thematic units. Covering graphic design, interior design, industrial design, fashion and architecture, classes will be primarily student-led through discussion, presentations, and group work.
HAD-670 The Current Season - (3 Credits)
This course offers a direct engagement with contemporary art on view in New York City during the semester. It seeks to incorporate a broad range of works, styles and media, and will involve various approaches to art and art criticism. The course involves extensive looking, reading and writing, and requires students to compose several short pieces of art criticism based on works and exhibitions viewed throughout the semester.
HAD-671 Critical Models in Art and Theory, 1965 -Present - (3 Credits)
This course seeks to consider the interrelationship between contemporary art and critical theory. Taking up key methodologies elaborated over the past decades such as poststructuralism, psychoanalytic theory, post-colonialism, and critical modernist studies, this course will re-examine art practices since 1965, institutional critique most centrally, in the light of its close connections to theory. Art historical texts in dialogue with the methodologies under consideration will be read in class, and films by the artists under study will be screened, when relevant.
HAD-672 Curating Culture: A History of Museums, Collecting, and Display - (3 Credits)
This course will address the history and theory of museums, collection, and exhibitions. In addition to a consideration of the development of the institution of the museum the course will address the ways and \"Whys\" societies have organized, structures, classified and displayed knowledge and material culture throughout time. The course will begin with a study of the Renaissance cabinet of curiosities and continue through the opening of the British Museum and the Louvre to the new museums of today. Subjects to be considered include the role of Enlightenment, nationalism colonialism, anthropology, appropriation, and architecture. These subjects, in turn, will raise questions about our notions of history, art, public institutions, as well as visual and material culture.
HAD-674 Museology - (3 Credits)
This course introduces students to the various aspects and endeavors that encompass the development and operation of the Museum. Through readings, lectures, discussions and, most of all, meetings with museum professionals, students will gain knowledge and understanding of the nature of Museums, the work they do, and the issues they face, both within the institution and within their larger communities. Areas addressed include curatorial work, conservation, exhibition design, development, education, public relations, financial management, and the functions of the registrar.
HAD-675 Museums Seen: Curating Culture in NYC - (3 Credits)
This course addresses current practices of collection, exhibition and display through firsthand experience of local New York City museums. These frequent visits (both as a class and independently) offer students an intimate view of the various ways culture-and NYC in particular-defines the museum institution. As a cultural capital, NYC offers a diversity of museum experiences. This course will use that diversity to address not only the nature of context, interpretation and aesthetics for collection but also the context of a city for this particular collection of institutions.
HAD-681 Introduction to Painting Conservation - (3 Credits)
This course will examine the principal materials and techniques used in Western paintings from the 13th century to the present. Emphasis will be placed on technical innovations such as the advent of oil painting, the expansion of the modern palette, and the recent development of synthetic paints. To better understand the materiality of painting, each student will prepare a small panel painting using egg tempera and gilding techniques. In addition, this course will introduce basic in painting techniques and other conservation strategies used during a work's treatment, exhibition, and storage. Students will also explore the analytic techniques used to assess a painting's condition, including X-radiography, Infrared Reflectography, and Ultraviolet Fluorescence. No previous painting
HAD-682 Technical Considerations for Art Historians - (3 Credits)
This course introduces the materials and techniques used to make works of art, ethnographic objects, and other historical artifacts. Emphasis will be placed on the identification of materials and historical alternations that have taken place since the time of the object's completion. In addition, students will explore the analytic techniques used to assess the condition and authenticity of these objects, as well as conservation strategies used during the treatment, exhibition, and storage of works of art.
HAD-683 Origins of Color and Artist's Pigments - (3 Credits)
This course explores the history of art through the lens of color. From the wall paintings of antiquity to synthetic paints of today, the role of pigments will be highlighted as a means to connect the aesthetics of a given age with the painting materials available at the time. The impact of specific pigments will be described from the perspectives of both artist and connoisseur as this interdisciplinary course investigates the subject through historical lectures, museum visits, studio sessions, and laboratory experiments. No previous painting experience or scientific background is necessary.
HAD-691 Pratt in Paris: Art on Site - (3 Credits)
Paris' role in the transformation of visual culture across the long nineteenth century continues to maintain a hold on the discipline of the history of art and design and contemporary culture. Why? This course immerses students in the 18th-early 20th centuries' histories of French material and visual culture through seminar sessions, on-site visits and walking tours in order to investigate this question. Through discussions, readings, writing, and most importantly close looking of objects in Paris collections and spaces, students will engage in an in-depth study of the century's major themes and interpretations.
HAD-695 Pratt in Paris:Design on site - (3 Credits)
This is a three-credit course that offers a unique, full-scale immersion in 17th-early 20th centuries histories of French design in an expanded content-field beyond the classroom. The course will examine the intertwined development of French decorative arts and design, from fashion and architecture to furniture, interior, and graphic design through in-person lectures, seminars, and guided visits at renowned Paris institutions. A hands on, experiential learning opportunity, students will immerse themselves fully in French culture while part of this Pratt in Paris program.
HAD-699 Independent Study - (3 Credits)
Independent study in art history is available to graduate students who develop a contract with the appropriate professor in art history to do research in an area not covered in the courses offered or that grows out of and goes beyond work already done in a 500-level art history course. The professor chosen must be an expert in the material to be studied and the contract must specify regular advisement sessions. The paper must be the product of the research. No student may take HA-699 more than once.
HAD-700 Thesis In Progress - (0 Credits)
If the thesis course is not completed in the initial semesters, students can continue working in HA-700 for no more than five semesters.
HAD-9600 History of Art & Design Internship - (0 Credits)
The internship is a learning experience at a discipline-related professional site. It provides students with an opportunity to apply academic knowledge and skills in a practical setting, while obtaining new knowledge and skills in preparation for professional work or graduate school. Students experience the application of coursework lessons into a real-life context, thus enriching their education. They deepen their knowledge about important applied aspects of their discipline, enhance their professional skills in a real-world context, build their professional network, and inform their career choices. Additional faculty-supervised activities provide the opportunity for an in-depth reflection on the internship experience.
HAD-9602 History of Art & Design Internship - (2 Credits)
The internship is a learning experience at a discipline-related professional site. It provides students with an opportunity to apply academic knowledge and skills in a practical setting,while obtaining new knowledge and skills in preparation for professional work or graduate school. Students experience the application of coursework lessons into a real-life context, thus enriching their education. They deepen their knowledge about important applied aspects of their discipline, enhance their professional skills in a real-world context, build their professional network, and inform their career choices. Additional faculty-supervised activities provide the opportunity for an in-depth reflection on the internship experience.
HAD-9603 History of Art & Design Internship - (3 Credits)
The internship is a learning experience at a discipline-related professional site. It provides students with an opportunity to apply academic knowledge and skills in a practical setting, while obtaining new knowledge and skills in preparation for professional work or graduate school. Students experience the application of coursework lessons into a real-life context, thus enriching their education. They deepen their knowledge about important applied aspects of their discipline, enhance their professional skills in a real-world context, build their professional network, and inform their career choices. Additional faculty-supervised activities provide the opportunity for an in-depth reflection on the internship experience.
HAD-9603B History of Art & Design Internship - (3 Credits)
The internship is a learning experience at a discipline-related professional site. It provides students with an opportunity to apply academic knowledge and skills in a practical setting, while obtaining new knowledge and skills in preparation for professional work or graduate school. Students experience the application of coursework lessons into a real-life context, thus enriching their education. They deepen their knowledge about important applied aspects of their discipline, enhance their professional skills in a real-world context, build their professional network, and inform their career choices. Additional faculty-supervised activities provide the opportunity for an in-depth reflection on the internship experience.