Penn History of Art

Penn History of Art houses one of the country's leading programs for the History of Art and one of the most active organizations on the Penn campus. At home in the Jaffe History of Art Building, we are located at both a physical and a virtual crossroads for Penn's vibrant community of students and teachers. 

We offer a wide variety of undergraduate instruction to satisfy the curiosity and pique the interest of students. General liberal arts majors and specialists are provided for equally. Our courses regularly transport students to Philadelphia's museums, galleries and historic sites, and we offer seminars in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Arthur Ross Gallery, in which students devise and organize exhibitions. The department is home to the Visual Studies program and is a significant contributor to the Cinema and Media Studies major. 

Our renowned graduate program is sustained by the Faculty of the Graduate Group in the History of Art, whose collegial appointments drawn from elsewhere in the University enriches the scope and expands the size of the department. The department also hosts the Graduate Group in the Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World, underscoring the breadth of our interests. 

We are proud that our faculty have received all of the University's teaching awards (the Abrams, College Alumni Society, and Lindback prizes), and that faculty scholarship has won the major prizes of the College Art Association and the Society of Architectural Historians. History of Art faculty are also recipients of the major fellowships that support scholarly work: Guggenheim, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Humanities Center, Woodrow Wilson Center, etc.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
  • Publication
    Review of Roger S. Keyes, Ehon: The Art of the Japanese Book
    (2007-09-01) Davis, Julie Nelson
  • Publication
    Reconstructing ninth-century Constantinople
    (1998) Ousterhout, Robert G
    In 879, following what was called a "victorious return from campaign", the Emperor Basil I staged a triumphal entry into the city of Constantinople. After spending the night at Hebdomon, he moved in solemn procession toward the city, stopping for a costume change at the monastery of the Avraamites before passing through the Golden Gate.
  • Publication
    Animation, Abstraction, Sampling: Kota Ezawa in Conversation with Karen Beckman
    (2012-05-02) Beckman, Karen
    Kota Ezawa Kota Ezawa is a Japanese-German artist currently based in San Francisco. He re-creates, frame by frame, animated sequences from television, cinema, and art history using basic digital drawing and animation software. He has had solo exhibitions at venues that include The Box, Wexner Center for the Arts; Hayward Gallery, London; the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; and the Santa Monica Museum of Art. in Conversation with Karen Beckman Karen Beckman is the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Professor of Cinema and Modern Media and interim chair of the Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. She is an editor of Grey Room.
  • Publication
    Building Medieval Constantinople
    (1996) Ousterhout, Robert G
    The visitor to modem Istanbul is often struck by the dramatic contrasts of the city: ostentatious displays of wealth appear side by side with poverty and squalor; the decrepid hovels of the poor lie in the shadows of monuments of past glory; at the same time, a new city rises amid the ruins of antiquity. How much has the character of the city changed since Byzantine times?
  • Publication
    Review of The Ear Catches the Eye: Music in Japanese Prints
    (2001-12-01) Davis, Julie Nelson
  • Publication
    The Byzantine Church at Enez: Problems in Twelfth-Century Architecture
    (1985) Ousterhout, Robert G
    The large and impressive Byzantine church known as Fatih Camii was built at Enez in Turkish Thrace was first published by Eyice in 1969. Since that time, it has been noted by Vango and Vocotopoulos, but has otherwise received little scholarly attention. The church is not securely dated and its original dedication is unknown, but its size alone indicates that the foundation was accorded importance. The plan measures approximately 21 x 38 meters, and is thus larger than almost all of the Middle and Late Byzantine churches of Constantinople.
  • Publication
    The Handwritten and the Printed: Issues of Format and Medium in Japanese Premodern Books
    (2016-05-01) Chance, Linda H; Davis, Julie Nelson
    The act of rendering the handwritten in print participates in a long tradition of appreciation of calligraphy in East Asia. This essay considers the question of why manuscript remained the mode for representing writing well after the development of print culture in early modern Japan, forcing us to reexamine our expectations of what the term “manuscript” means: must a work be “written by hand” to be a manuscript, for instance? We argue that the use of print technology as a means to capture and disseminate the calligraphic expands the scope of current notions of what a manuscript is and challenges the model of separation between “manuscript” and “print.”
  • Publication
    A Byzantine Chapel at Didymoteicho and its Frescoes
    (1999) Ousterhout, Robert G
    The fortified citadel of Didymoteicho in Greek Thrace figured prominently in Late Byzantine history. It had been an imperial residence and a major military and administrative center since the mid-13th century, and throughout the remainder of its Byzantine history, it maintained close relations with Constantinople. Andronicus III resided in Didymoteicho during the 1320s, prior to his accession to the throne in 1328. With the proclamation of John VI Cantacuzenus as emperor in Didymoteicho in 1341, the city became his de facto capital, from which he launched his disastrous civil war.