Both the MA and PhD programs emphasize the research, writing, and teaching necessary to pursue a career in academia, curatorial work, art consultation, heritage programs, cultural journalism, or secondary school teaching. The faculty supervise students in the fields of Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque, Asian, African, Architecture, and Modern and Contemporary Art.
Students in the graduate program may also benefit from the department's affiliations with the Centre for Medieval Studies, the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, the program in Book History and Print Culture, and the Mediterranean Archaeology Collaborative Specialization. Resources and affiliated faculty at the Royal Ontario Museum, the University Art Centre, the Gardiner Museum, and the Art Gallery of Ontario also provide access to Toronto's vibrant arts scene. The University hosts a number of specialist libraries for art historical research, including the Department of Art History's library with over 40,000 exhibition catalogues, the Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library, and Robarts Research Library, a resource unrivalled in Canada and among the leading university libraries in North America. The PhD program is designed to prepare students for college and university teaching, museum work, and other research positions.
Graduate study in the fields of modern and contemporary art and visual culture is especially strong at the University of Toronto with over ten full-time faculty members dedicated to these areas. From the 18th century to the present and with an encompassing range of historical and theoretical emphases, our faculty are at the forefront of research and teaching across the full gamut of media. As befits its home in one of the world's most cosmopolitan cities, the Department offers unparalleled opportunities for the advanced study of modern and contemporary art and visual culture of North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. This extraordinary diversity yields unusual strength in several coherent areas of inquiry, affording students the opportunity to fashion highly original research trajectories both within and across traditional geographical and chronological boundaries.
