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Department of

Art, Architecture + Art History

Learning Outcomes

Visual Arts Long-term Assessment Plan

 

1. Program Mission Statement

The Department of Art, Architecture + Art History is committed to shaping the next generation of artists, designers,
critics and creative thinkers. Our students explore a great variety of artistic practices, both traditional and emerging, before concentrating in an area of the visual arts, art history, or architecture.

The Department of Art, Architecture + Art History also serves the greater university by introducing the students of the liberal arts to the history, theory and practice of the arts in courses of augmenting degrees of complexity. In their creative and written work, students learn to read, artistically represent, and critically participate in the symbolic, social and physical spaces that constitute the human environment. Dedicated to exploring the creative practices at the forefront of our disciplines, we believe that art not only mirrors the society in which it is produced, but also shapes it: we are most interested in art’s potential to offer a critique of culture, and embody in the present that which is yet to become.

The Visual Arts program of the Department of Art, Architecture + Art History, is aligned with the university’s mission and serves the greater goals of the university by advancing academic excellence and expanding knowledge of the liberal arts.

2. Program goals Visual Arts

Goal 1:

Knowledge: the Visual Arts program within the Department of Art, Architecture + Art History seeks to share with students the benefits of acquiring a knowledge of art that can be gathered from the best ideas, understanding and critical thinking exemplified in a broad spectrum of innovations and histories. This search for knowledge is inclusive, and recognizes examples offered by artists, art historians and other experts from various periods and diverse cultures.

Goal 2:

Skills: Artmaking requires a variety of skills, and a synthetic approach to the creation of meaningful work. Technical competencies must be learned in multiple media and applied in various methods and strategies deemed most appropriate. These methods and strategies are practiced in a manner that supports the understanding and critical thinking appropriate to the artwork’s execution.

3. Student Learning Outcomes

Technical Competency
LO 1: Students demonstrate a reasonably high degree of competency of technical execution appropriate to the chosen medium.

 

Understanding
LO 2: In their oral presentations and written papers, students demonstrate an understanding of the social, visual, psychological and/or aesthetic components of artmaking.

 

Critical Thinking
LO 3: Students demonstrate in their artist statements and group critiques an awareness of the contemporary concerns in art, and can assess critically their own contribution.

 

Artmaking
LO 4: Students make works of art that reflect a synthesis of competent technical execution, written understanding and critical thinking appropriate to the chosen medium. This work may involve a variety of strategies including possible combinations of traditional and nontraditional media and text.


4. Preparation and Requirements for the Major

Preparation for the Visual Arts Major (Summarized)
• Four classes from: ARTV 101, 103, 104, 108, 160,
• Two classes from: ARTH 133, 134, 135, 138, 330.
• 28 upper-division units of visual arts including ARTV 478 (Senior Thesis Studio Seminar) and ARTV 495 (Senior Thesis).
• Three upper-division courses in an area of specialization.
• ARTH 334 – Art of the Twentieth Century in Europe and the Americas
• Participation in junior review during the second semester of the junior year.
• Completion of Senior Thesis Studio Seminar
• Completion of ARTV 495 – Senior thesis must be completed during the second semester of the senior year


5. Curricular Map (Visual Arts)

KEY: I = Introduced; P = Practiced; R=Reinforced.
NA=Not Applicable
Learning Outcome 1: Technical Competency
Learning Outcome 2: Understanding
Learning Outcome 3: Critical Thinking
Learning Outcome 4: Art Making

Visual Arts Assessment Curricular Map

6. Assessment Responsibilities

Department plan for initiating the assessment process:
The Assessment committee will consist of two full time faculty members within Visual Arts appointed by the Chair. The committee will be responsible to oversee the collection of evidence that has been gathered by the Visual Arts faculty. Such evidence will be evaluated by the committee and submitted to the Chair of the Department of Art, Architecture + Art History and to the Arts and Sciences Assessment Officer for storage. At the end of each assessment cycle, it is the responsibility of the Visual Arts Assessment committee to present the results to the department and to make recommendations as appropriate.

7. Assessment Activity Rubric

Visual Arts Assessment Evidence Chart

8. Timeline

Visual Arts Assessment Timeline Map

9. Assessment Analysis Update

(We have no revisions of the assessment plan. )

 

History of Art and Architecture Long-term Assessment Plan

 

1. Program Mission Statement

The major in the History of Art and Architecture is designed to prepare students to consider art works as evidential—each work representative of its original time, place, and circumstances of production. Students will be equipped to view art history as a discipline that has a history, and will be able to examine the historical and theoretical frames that have shaped its work over time. Thus, for instance, students will be prepared to examine the assumptions that have informed linear histories of art unfolding along a continuum of time, countering these, for instance, with readings that trace developments across geographical space.

Students will probe the ways that form is linked with meaning, and the ways that changes in form can be read as indicative of developments that take place across time and space. So, too, they will register the shifting boundaries of art history’s domain, which has come to extend well beyond the “luxury” items of high art (painting, sculpture, drawing, architecture) to the broader realm of material culture.

Art history, as Donald Preziosi has written, makes “the visible legible.” Students of art history should be able to think and write with precision about art and visual culture, attuned to perceptual process and alert to the power of images and objects, reasoning with the evidence, imagining and analyzing the intertwinings of form, context, and content.

2. Program goals Art History

Goal 1: Strategies of inquiry

It is the goal of Art History that our majors develop strategies to examine art and visual culture in their contexts: probing the intertwining of form, content, and meaning; and investigating the theoretical lenses that have been enlisted to discern the import of art, architecture, and material culture.

Goal 2: Knowledge

We intend that our majors deploy these strategies of inquiry in considering the art and visual culture of a variety of places and times, gathering perspective from the specificity of each context.

3. Student Learning Outcomes

Strategies of Inquiry

LO 1: Know the foundational readings and important case studies in the history and theory of art and architecture of specific time periods; conduct independent research

LO 2: Analyze specific aesthetic achievements in relationship with the principal theoretical debates that have surrounded them, and with the various interpretative methods that have emerged out of them

LO 3: Analyze: write with sophistication, self-awareness, and rigor about the history, theory and criticism of art and architecture

LO 4: Synthesize: Conduct research with proficiency, locating and assimilating scholarly articles and books, taking an informed, critical position, supported by informed analysis

Knowledge

LO 5: Evaluate the role of historical context and theoretical lenses in the unfolding of art and architecture; distinguish their own voice from those of their sources

LO 6: Evaluate: Write well-reasoned, thoroughly researched, thesis-driven papers that acknowledge and evaluate multiple sources; and write proficiently about the questions and debates that propel art history and the methodologies that have shaped its unfolding shifts in strategy; formulate independent positions, informed by but distinct from the sources of information

4. Preparation and Requirements for the Major

Art history majors choose one of three subdisciplines:
1. Art History (general)
2. Art Administration
3. Public Art and Architectural Culture


Preparation for the major in the History of Art and Architecture: Lower-division requirements

Students should complete two of the following courses:
ARTH 133, 134, 135, 138. (ARCH 121 can be substituted for ARTH 135; students considering the public art and architectural culture emphasis are encouraged to take ARTH 135 or ARCH 121.) As part of the art history major, students should complete two visual arts courses.

The History of Art and Architecture: Upper-division requirements
Students select one of three emphases, each with specific requirements.

Art History (General)
28 upper-division units in art history. ARTH 395 Methods in Art History and ARTH 495 Senior Thesis are required for graduation.

Art Administration

An art history emphasis is allied with studies in business and administration, in preparation for positions in art-related businesses and institutions. Prerequisites are as in the major.
1. Art components: ARTH 334, 339, 340, 395, 495, 498 and four other upper-division art history courses. ARTH 395 Methods in Art History is required for graduation.
2. Management components: Business minor, or the following courses: ACCT 201, ENGL 304W, COMM 103, ITMG 100, POLS 125D or 340, SOCI 110. ECON 101 is recommended.

Public Art and Architectural Culture

28 upper-division units in art history, including ARTH 395 Methods in Art History and ArtH 495 Senior Thesis. At least six of these courses should be selected from the following: ARTH 330, 331, 334, 338, 339, 342, 343, 345, 354, 355, 356, 382, 393 (ARCH 321 can be substituted for ARTH 338; ARCH 322 can be substituted for ARTH 342; ARCH 323 can be substituted for ARTH 343).

5. Curricular Map (HISTORY OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE)

KEY: I = Introduced; P = Practiced; R=Reinforced.
NA=Not Applicable

History of Art and Architecture Assessment Map 1

6. Assessment Responsibilities

Each spring, the Chair of the Department of Art, Architecture + Art History will appoint two full-time faculty members to the History of Art and Architecture Assessment task force for the following academic year. At least one member of the task force will be tenured. The Committee will confer with the entire faculty in the History of Art and Architecture to devise the plan and timeline of collecting evidence for the year, and will assess the evidence against the goals of the long-term plan, file the final report, and submit all the data and evidence to the Arts and Sciences Assessment Officer for storage. The results of the assessment process will be shared with the department as a whole at the start of each academic year, to guide the fine-tuning of our assessment processes.

7. Assessment Activity Rubric

History of Art and Architecture Assessment Activity Rubric

8. Timeline

We have embarked on the assessment of learning outcomes 3 and 4 in ArtH 333 during spring 2010. During 2010-11 we will assess two additional learning goals, and during 2011-12 we will assess the final two learning goals.

History of Art and Architecture Assessment Timeline Map