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Students on Bench at Cabell Hall

Art History

The University’s Art History Department is not only the largest in the nation, but its faculty is also internationally renowned. Among the many honors presented to art history faculty are Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, visiting senior fellowships at the Getty Center for the Arts and Humanities, election to the Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Mellon Professorship at the American Academy in Rome, and a Mellon Professorship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art. Such distinguished faculty attract top-tier students.

On the graduate level, art and architectural history merged in 2004. Nearly two dozen faculty teach in diverse fields, with particularly strong concentrations in ancient, Renaissance, modern, American, and Asian art and architecture. The department’s large faculty enables it to offer both a wide range of graduate courses and a faculty-to-student ratio that encourages close faculty mentoring of each student in the program.

The recent success of the History of Art and Architecture program was bolstered by the generous campaign gift of $2.8 million by Carl and Martha Lindner of Cincinnati. By strengthening a program in the arts, the contribution helped the University meet one of its top priorities—making the fine and performing arts here among the best in the nation.

The Lindner endowment fund supports both graduate and undergraduate study in art history, as well as faculty research initiatives and course development. The fund also supports the increasing use of digital technology in the teaching of art history, and makes it possible to bring distinguished visiting scholars to the University for a semester or an academic year.

Another recent advance in the art history department is the restoration and renovation of Fayerweather Hall, which houses the department and encompasses the Lindner Center. Built as a gymnasium in the late nineteenth century, the refurbished facility is now complete. The renovation created new offices for faculty and graduate assistants, an archeology study facility, new meeting and seminar rooms, and a space for the storage and retrieval of art slides and other visual resources.

Ongoing goals for the campaign in art history include the following:

  • Increasing financial aid to attract graduate students.
  • Adding faculty in at least two fields outside the University's traditional excellence in European and American art.
  • Increasing the use of digital media in teaching and more collaboration with the media studies department.
  • Increasing faculty and student participation in the programs of the University of Virginia Art Museum.

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Pictures at his Own Exhibition

Christopher Oliver, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences '08

John Toole's career as a portrait painter flourished after he left the University nearly two centuries ago. Now, art history grad student Christopher Oliver's career is taking off after directing an exhibition of works by Toole last summer.

Toole (1815–1860) was an artist whose works offer a look in to the role of a traveling portrait painter in the nineteenth-century. The exhibition is drawn from more than forty paintings and drawings that comprise the University's collection.

U.Va. was the obvious choice for Oliver, who is studying American art history. The art history department's national reputation grew after its merger with architecture in 2005, creating one of the largest programs for American art history in the country.

"I came to work with Maurie McInnis [associate professor in the McIntire Department of Art] at U.Va.," Oliver said. McInnis' research looks at how history and culture are reflected in art and vice versa. "The University's art history program focuses on more than just traditional art history with professors like McInnis," Mr. Oliver said. Cultural artifacts such as furniture and even culinary history are studied as part of America's aesthetic legacy.

In the midst of managing the Toole exhibit, Mr. Oliver is completing his master's thesis, and worked as an assistant on McInnis's exhibit—"The Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art" last year—and teaching in the art history department.

And McInnis is pleased with her student's progress. "So here is a student who is simultaneously a great student and teacher, and is bringing the teaching and research mission of the University to the public through his work on exhibitions," Ms. McInnis said. "He is an excellent example of why graduate students are vital to the mission of the University."