Art History Facilities

Art History facilities within the Department of Art are located in ACB 244, classrooms 250, 257, 310, and 317, and the VRC in 104. The variety of space supports the goals of both the undergraduate and graduate art history programs.
Suite 244 consist of seven office spaces for the core art history faculty which is the most diverse in the region. These scholars offer a range of courses and concentrations in European, American, and African Diaspora art histories.
Suite 244 includes the Art History Conference Room and Library located in 244A. The Art History Library is comprised of volumes representative of the western tradition focused on modern and contemporary arts. It is an important resource tool for students and faculty in all of the programs in the Department of Art. The collection is particularly strong in Modern American Photography, Contemporary Folk Art, and African American art and visual culture.
244A also serves as the central work study space for graduate students in art history. Under the supervision of art history faculty graduate students catalogue incoming books for the library, and assist faculty in research, grading papers, and any other student activities related to their learning experience in the art history program. The Art History Library includes students' graduate thesis dating back to the 1970s. In addition, within Suite 244 is 244I, a small storage closet where additional instructional materials for the art history program are deposited.
The smart classrooms, 250, 257, 310, and 317, which have from 25 to 60 seats, are main instructional spaces for the art history program. ACB 250 is a large lecture auditorium space with three projector screens and a seating capacity of about 250. Art history faculty teach a range of courses providing students with foundational and specialized knowledge in the arts and visual cultures of the western world from global- multi-cultural perspectives. The curriculum includes such topics as Greek and Roman Art, High Renaissance and Neo-Classicism, Early Modern and Contemporary Art Theory and Criticism, the Social History of American Art, History of Photography I and History of Photography II, Visual Arts of Africa, and African American Art. ACB 317 is the site for teaching graduate seminars. Examples of recent thesis topics reflect the strength and breath of the art history program, such as "Culture and Resistance-Civil Rights Photography: Memphis, 1968," by Leila Hamdan, 2014; "Representations of Women in Casta Paintings of Colonial Mexico," by Lacie Glover, 2014; and "Identifying Conventions in Memphis Art History: a Case Study of the Exhibition Present Tense: the Art of Memphis, 2001-Now,"by Jody Stokes-Casey, 2014.
The art history spaces likewise host the scholar associated with The Dorothy Kayser Hohenberg Chair of Excellence in Art History which provides the department with a distinguished visiting scholar each year.
The classroom spaces along with the Atrium and wide hallways on the 2nd Floor are also made available for guest lectures and broader, community oriented events sponsored by the College of Communications and Fine Arts. These include the Visiting Artists Lecture Series, the Art History Lecture Series, or summer workshops for Shelby County high school students like the African American Summer Institute in West African Arts 2014, sponsored by the Student Travel Abroad program to Ghana.
The VRC, ACB 104, is presently used to store tens of thousands of art history slides and visual resources equipment like portable screens, scanners, light tables, etc. It also functions as an alternative classroom and meeting space for faculty and students. In the art history program.