Art History

As an art history major, you'll study art in its historical and cultural contexts. You'll examine the genre, design and style of major works including paintings, sculpture and architecture as well as contemporary media and cultural practices. Your focus will be global and contemporary art and also include related fields such as film history or anthropology. Through your coursework, you'll explore questions such as: What are this style's key features? What meaning did this convey when it was made and does this meaning differ now? How does the art function visually and culturally? What roles has art played historically and socially? An optional internship will enable you to gain experience in a gallery, art center, arts organization or museum.

The Art History program is not currently accepting new students.

St. Cloud State offers a variety of programs that you may be interested in:

• Art Programs
• History Programs

Program Requirements Department of Art Art Scholarships

Program Highlights

• Kiehle Visual Arts Center houses ceramics, wet-based photography and printmaking; large studio classrooms for painting, drawing, sculpture, and art education; student studios; a woodshop; a metal shop; and several large computer labs and a digital project lab that support graphic design, digital photography, video and multimedia.
• Faculty are established artists as well as teachers with work exhibited and selected for collections across the country including the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Walker Art Center, Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and Cain Schulte Gallery in San Francisco.
• Visiting Artists, Designers, and Curators Program, annually invites three or four national arts professionals such as Nicholas Brown, a curator from Yale; Michelle Grabner, Chicago artist and co-curator of the 2014 Whitney Biennial; and Mark Randall, New York graphic designer to lead workshops and meet with students one-on-one to discuss their work.
• Student-run Gallery Vault in downtown St. Cloud provides exhibit space for student artists and develops art-centered events that connect the university and the St. Cloud community. 

Program Distinctions

• Kiehle Gallery exhibits the work of innovative regional artists and designers who discuss their work during openings and hosts the annual juried student art show, curated by a Twin-Cities arts professional.
• 1 of 7 colleges, schools, and universities in Minnesota accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design.
• Faculty includes two Fulbright fellows, five McKnight fellows, three Bush fellows, and one Joan Mitchell Foundation fellow.
• Notable alumni: TyRuben Ellingson '81 '82 is a conceptual designer who has worked with film directors such as James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Guillermo Del Toro and the late Stanley Kubrick. Valerie Snobeck '03, named by arts writer Elisa Carmichael as one of 25 artists to watch in 2013, exhibited as part of Whitney Biennial, a show of new American art at Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. 

University Facts & Stats

• 92% of studio art graduates employed

• $106 million in scholarships loans and grants

• 90+ nations represented on campus

• 39 Education Abroad programs offered

• Among Forbes' "America's Top Colleges"