News & Events

  1. Professor Lamia Balafrej Named Berenson Fellow at I Tatti

    Professor Lamia Balafrej has been named the 2025-2026 Berenson Fellow with her project "The Feminized Robot as Palimpest" at I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian...

  2. Professor Stella Nair to present at “Microhistories of Architecture” conference in Zurich

    On June 13, Professor Stella Nair will present a talk entitled “The Toilets of Machu Picchu: Sanitation, the Body, and the Rethinking of Inca Architecture” at "Microhistories...

  3. Doctoral Candidate Mal Meisels to Curate “Queer Kin: Histories of Subversive Love” at Clark Library

    Sean Brenner | June 9, 2025 Painted on the ceiling above the vestibule of UCLA’s William Andrews Clark Memorial Library is a striking mural of 14 nude male bodies....

  4. Professor Meredith Cohen to present at Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rome

    On May 29, Professor Meredith Cohen presented at "Empty Boxes? Modeling the Lost and Ephemeral in Premodern Sacred Spaces" at Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rome. For more...

  5. Professor George Baker to Release New Book on May 20

    The release of Professor George Baker’s latest book, co-edited with Annie Rana - Tacita Dean, in the OCTOBER File series - has just been announced on May...

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Mission Statement

The UCLA Department of Art History was one of the first in the United States to embrace a mission of comprehensive global coverage.

With this mission, the department has educated undergraduate and graduate students for decades with a broad-based understanding of art that comes from exposure to the artistic practices of a variety of “western” and “non-western” cultures through time and space.

With its requirements for study across the globe and for foreign language training above and beyond the college obligation, our department seeks to encourage students to question the art historical canon, to rethink the relationships between margins and centers, and to practice a socially and politically responsible art history.