A.B. Principia College
M.A. University of California, Berkeley
M.F.A. Princeton University
Ph.D. Princeton University
Art history holds a fairly recent slot in the liberal arts curriculum, perhaps not having existed in many colleges for more than a half century. Yet it was an architect of the late Roman Republic who provided the outline for a liberal arts education for architects that was eagerly taken up as a basis for the self-education of artists in the early fifteenth-century Renaissance in Italy, within a century gaining for them professional and cultural respect on an international scale that few artists have enjoyed since that time. So, when Principia’s Art and Art History Department features many courses for artists, the classes are embedded in this type of liberal arts education.
Where does art history fit in all this, if it was not a separate category within the liberal arts education when our ancient Roman architect was writing?
Developing in the last century out of the needs of the art market on the one hand and the study of the antiquities on the other, art history grew up in the Renaissance and blossomed almost immediately into one of the most creative, dynamic, and pleasurable of intellectual pursuits. Now applied without limits to a wide range of art, architecture, and artifact in the visual culture of the Western and non-Western worlds, the discipline of art history is issue-driven. It offers opportunities for students and scholars to penetrate deeply behind the surface appearances of works of art to study their original purpose and meaning, and to pose many social and intellectual questions. Many of these works grow out of the deepest religious aspirations of humankind. Art history allows us to understand more of the struggles and triumphs of individual artists and architects, and how to discern their messages and meanings most intelligently and sympathetically. The study of art history encourages the cultivation of foreign language skills, a knowledge of history and literature, and the awakening of a wide-ranging intellectual curiosity.
Principia’s art history courses provide a strong writing component, access to original works of art and architecture in local, metropolitan, and sometimes international settings, guidance to independent research, and interdisciplinary links to the study of literature, history, music, religion, philosophy, and other fields of interest. Art history students often go on to pursue graduate studies.
Margaret D’Evelyn has studied Art History on both coasts in America and as a visiting scholar for four years in Cambridge, England. While living in Providence, Rhode Island, she taught at the Brown [University] Learning Community, the University of Rhode Island, Wheaton College (Norton, Mass.), the Community College of Rhode Island, and the Rhode Island School of Design. She has supervised undergraduates at Cambridge University, where she was an associate at Clare Hall. She is currently engaged in writing a book on Venice and Vitruvius.
