GRADRESOURCES
Graduate Resources
The Department of the History of Art at the University of California, Riverside offers a Master of Arts degree to prepare students for further academic study at the doctoral level; and for careers in art critical writing and in museums, galleries, and other arts institutions. The graduate program at UC Riverside offers a full range of art history courses, with faculty specializing in the major Western fields as well as Asian art. Students are encouraged to take the interdisciplinary graduate courses offered by the Literature, English, Dance, History, Anthropology, and Women's Studies programs on campus.
Under the Graduate Student Guidelines, the History of Art MA degree may be completed in two years of full time study, with the first year focused on course-work and the second on the research and writing of the thesis.
The MA program seeks to expand the student's knowledge across the fields offered and also to encourage in-depth research in an area of concentration. In addition to this intellectual training, students are encouraged to obtain practical experience through participation in the organization and mounting of exhibitions at the Sweeney Art Gallery and California Museum of Photography on campus, as well as at other local arts institutions. After receiving their MA degrees, UCR Art History graduates have successfully matriculated in major PhD programs or obtained jobs in related fields. Recent MA thesis have ranged in topic from a critical study of Thai modernism to an examination of Frederico Zuccaro's Coronation of the Virgin Altarpiece in Rome.
MA level research is well supported through other campus resources such as the Department's Visual Resources Collection, the Rivera library, which contains approximately 8 million titles, and the California Museum of Photography, which possesses one of the leading collections of popular and fine art photographs in the country. UC Riverside is situated an hour from downtown Los Angeles, and numerous other resources in the immediate area are available to graduate students.
The Department of the History of Art is a member of the Getty Consortium, a group of Southern California graduate program in Art History which participate in a regular seminar held at the Getty Research Institute and using all the resources of the Getty Center in particular and Southern California in general. The seminar is currently offered once a year and is taken for credit. Students apply for participation on a competitive basis.
Admissions take place on a rolling basis but applicants are urged to apply by January 5 in order to be considered for fellowship support. To receive an application email us at arthist@ucr.edu
Graduate Support in the form of Teaching and Research Assistantships and Graduate Fellowships, is available through the department. Other forms of financial aid are also available.