Why Art History?

A bit about how we do art history here at Wheaton.

And I suppose this is as good a place as any to keep a running list (to be updated over time) of recent "why art history?" articles (and why liberal arts in general as well).

1. Looking at Art Could Help Medical Students Become Better Doctors
2. How Art History Majors Power the U.S. Economy
3. One Man's Quest to Change the Way We Die

Miller had wanted to work in foreign relations, in China; now he started studying art history. He found it to be a good lens through which to keep making sense of his injuries.

First, there was the discipline’s implicit conviction that every work is shaped by the viewer’s perspective. He remembers looking at slides of ancient sculptures in a dark lecture hall, all of them missing arms or noses or ears, and suddenly recognizing them for what they were: fellow amputees. “We were, as a class, all calling these works monumental, beautiful and important, but we’d never seen them whole,” he says. Time’s effect on these marble bodies — their suffering, really — was understood as part of the art. Medicine didn’t think about bodies this way, Miller realized.

4. Why Med Schools are Requiring Art Classes
5. Mark Cuban: Liberal Arts is the Future
6. Liberal Arts in the Data Age