Art history degree and careers
Art History majors enrolled in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences follow a curriculum that emphasizes studies of diverse visual traditions in academic classes that stress writing and research skills. These students receive a BALAS (Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts & Sciences) degree.
All of the art history classes include students from both the BA and BFA degree tracks, so you will get to know students with a wide range of passions and interests—passions for seeing and thinking like an artist; passions for understanding art as an aspect of history and culture.
The faculty of the Art History Program are active scholars who are internationally recognized experts in their fields offering courses on topics including the arts of ancient Greece, imperial China, medieval and renaissance Europe, and modern and contemporary Africa and the Americas. Your course of study will include small seminars where you might help design an exhibition for the university art museum or research a 15th-century manuscript in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library. In all of your courses you will work with faculty who are committed to helping you develop skills in visual analysis, critical thinking, and effective writing.
Studying art history can lead to careers in museums and galleries, higher education, art librarianship, and the management of visual resources for universities and arts institutions. A degree in art history also provides excellent preparation for careers that require skills such as compelling writing, organization, and clear thinking. Many of our undergraduates go on to professional schools in law, business, and medicine.
Access to Libraries, Museums, and other Resources
Undergraduate students in Art History can take advantage of many supplemental resources on campus:
- The Society for Art History and Archaeology (SAHA) is a registered student organization at the university. Its primary goal is to promote interdisciplinary scholarship and new research that broadens understanding of the visual arts. Each year, SAHA sponsors several lectures. It also organizes symposia open to students in Art History and related disciplines. Membership is free and open to both graduate and undergraduate students.
- The Art History Common Room is available for use as a meeting room for all Art History graduate students. It is also used by faculty on occasion for meetings.
- The University Library, the largest public university library in the U.S., includes many branch libraries in specific subjects such as History and Philosophy, Modern Languages, Education, and Social Sciences.
- The Ricker Library of Art and Architecture is a branch of the University Library, and its collection includes more than 120,000 books, 33,000 serials, and a wide selection of videos.
- The Rare Book and Manuscript Library, also part of the University Library, includes original illustrated books and rare artists’ editions of books from the 15th through 20th centuries.
- Krannert Art Museum has a permanent collection of over 10,000 works of art from around the world with eight collection galleries, five special exhibition galleries, and an ongoing schedule of student events, artist lectures, and performances. Admission to the museum and student membership are free.
- The Spurlock Museum is an ethnographic museum with a diverse array of functional and art objects that represent past and present cultures from around the globe.
- Japan House is a center for the study of Japanese aesthetics and traditional arts. It offers classes on subjects including Japanese aesthetics, the Way of Tea, and ikebana.
Ask Us a Question
Let's Connect!
Art & Design on Instagram
The 2026 Welcome Back Picnic and All School Meeting will be held on September 11 @ 4pm in the Link Gallery. Free FOOD, join an RSO, and say hi to old and new friends. This is also an all school meeting!
kinda chic to reshare the one you relate to 🌞
Reward yourself with a sweet treat for surviving the first week of school! Come share a donut with Director Brooke White on Friday August 28th from 9am - 10:30 am in the Link Gallery 🍩
Celebrate the opening of Centering Clay: Connection and Innovation in American Studio Ceramics, meet our new director Stephanie Smith, and experience the first late night of the semester. Enjoy new exhibitions, live music, and a dance party in the galleries.
Opening Night at the Museum!
Thursday, Aug 27, 2026
5–7:30 pm
5:00 pm – Art on view and live music by Ther’Up.Y
6:00 pm – Director and curator remarks in the Link Gallery
6:30–7:30 pm – Dance party with DJ KamauMau
8:00 pm – Museum stays open until 8 pm
Centering Clay features art from the museum’s collection, including work by Katherine Choy, Richard DeVore, Donald Frith, Vivika and Otto Heino, Marvin Lipofsky, Gertrud and Otto Natzler, Don Pilcher, Jerry Rothman, and Peter Voulkos.
The museum is free and open to everyone!
Krannert Art Museum acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council.
📣 Calling all new and returning U of I students!
Kick off the school year and celebrate Krannert Art Museum’s newest exhibitions at KAM Fest 2026. Visit Krannert Art Museum to receive a free welcome kit, try printmaking with students from Noble Print Club, and meet our new Director Stephanie Smith, alongside pack-your-own care packages in Rest Lab to "ease on in"—to the new semester.
FREE ice cream or taco to the first 200 students!
Light snacks provided. Event goes until 3:30pm! From 12–2 pm, food will be available for purchase at food trucks parked in front of the museum. Welcome kits will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Join us! @kamillinois
In his new book, "Pastoral`s End: Art, Ecology, and Catastrophe in Renaissance Italy," Art & Design faculty and art historian James Pilgrim reveals how sixteenth-century painter Jacopo Bassano`s art reflected a world already grappling with environmental transformation. Blending art history, ecology, and archival research, the book offers a fresh perspective on how people have shaped, and are shaped by, the landscapes around them for centuries.
Congratulations to Professor Pilgrim on this exciting new publication!
Inspired by Fresh Press Paper (founded at Illinois in 2012 by graphic design professor Eric Benson), Zayed University recently launched Fresh Press Emirates, a hands-on initiative where students turn discarded hotel linens and plant materials into handmade paper for art and design projects.
The program brings together students across art, science, and sustainability while giving them a closer look at circular design and material reuse. Great to see a project that started at Illinois showing up in creative spaces halfway around the world.🌍📜
Read more at the link in bio! @freshpresspaper
Congratulations to Art Education PhD student Syed Faizaan Ahab on receiving the People’s Choice Award in the 2026 Image of Research competition at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign! 🎉
Here`s how Syed described his award-winning project, "Move:"
This image captures a video-based research project, "Move," at the intersection of movement, listening, and power. The three performers stand facing the viewer, gesturing classical South Asian dance vocabularies. Yet their bodies are held in stillness rather than spectacle. Their hands articulate meaning, but their expressions remain restrained, refusing explanation and performance as entertainment. This tension highlights how embodied knowledge is often rendered hypervisible yet misread within dominant cultural spaces. The stark lighting and frontal composition render the performers almost haunting, neither fully absorbed by the space nor entirely outside it. This visual ambiguity reflects what Allie Martin describes as the politics of listening, where sound and presence are interpreted through social hierarchies rather than neutral perception. Just as Martin argues that sound "happens in interpretation" (Martin, 2025), this image suggests that movement, too, is legible only through the frameworks viewers bring with them. The performers` stillness becomes a form of sonic restraint, an echo of moments where cultural expression is asked to quiet itself to belong. In this way, the image operates as both documentation and critique: a reminder that presence, like sound, does not require permission to exist, even when it is misheard or only partially seen.
Organized annually by the Graduate College and the Media Commons of the University Library, the Image of Research competition celebrates the creativity, innovation, and intellectual diversity of graduate student research across disciplines.
Join us in celebrating Syed’s incredible achievement and the powerful impact of arts-based research! 👏
