Art History Minor - Academic Experience

Visiting Artists and Speaker Series: The Department of Art regularly invites artists, critics, historians and designers to participate in the Department of Art Speaker Series, classroom lectures, and critiques.

Curatorial Opportunities: Students have opportunities to curate exhibitions at numerous art spaces, such as UB Art Galleries and The Project Space in the Center for the Arts.

Buffalo Metropolitan Area: Buffalo’s diverse grass-roots and alternative spaces dedicated to new and experimental genres complement institutions such as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Burchfield Penney Art Center. Toronto, a ninety-minute drive from Buffalo, is the largest metropolitan center in Canada. It has hundreds of alternative spaces and commercial art galleries including the Power Plant and the Ontario Gallery of Art.

Students explore the intersection of science, dance, engineering, business, and many other fields with the history of art, and are offered opportunities to develop projects in experimental spaces like Coalesce: Center for Biological Arts, College of Arts & Sciences Experiential Learning Center, as well as working with art collections and artists and curators.

Internships are frequently available to Art History majors and minors at such local museums and galleries as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Anderson Art Gallery, Big Orbit, Burchfield Penney Art Center, the Castellani Art Museum, the Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Art (CEPA), the UB Art Galleries, and Hallwalls. While internships may not be used to fulfill distribution requirements, they may be taken for credit.

With the approval of a faculty sponsor, students may sign up for a 3-credit independent study to pursue an issue or topic emerging from their coursework in art and art history. An independent study may not be used as a substitute for required courses.

Students interested in study abroad have the opportunity to participate in numerous art-oriented programs around the globe. The Department of Art encourages majors to consider a junior year study abroad program. Such programs afford unique opportunities to gain first-hand knowledge of foreign cultures.

The UB Department of Art’s Rumsey Scholarship provides funding for summer travel to one or two art and art history sophomores and juniors in this annual competition based on an exhibition of their work and a written travel proposal.