Art History (MA)

Your completed application will include:

• Application form and fee
• Curriculum vitae (CV)
• Three Letters of Reference and assessment form. References from Art History professors are preferred. Once contacted by the university, referees have 14 days to submit their letters. After that, the link provided to them will no longer be valid. For any questions contact Art History.
• A statement of purpose (500 words) should explain why you have chosen to do graduate work in Art History at Concordia University, propose a thesis topic or area of special interest, and discuss your professional goals.
• A writing sample (8-10 pages), which usually takes the form of an art history undergraduate essay
• Transcripts for all post-secondary institutions attended
• Proof of Canadian citizenship (if applicable)
• Official language test scores for applicants whose primary language is not English, unless exemption applies.

Please apply and submit your documents online. Read the how-to guide for application procedures.

For applications after this deadline, please contact the Graduate program director.

The MA in Art History provides you with an academically rich and collaborative learning environment, infused with professional development opportunities. Many of our classes integrate experiential learning components such as learning how to archive art text, building an art database, practicing curatorial writing, or developing websites.   

Recent course offerings have included: 

• Selected Issues in North American Art and Architectural History: Conversion Colonization and Agency
• Industrialization and the Built Environment: The Right to the City
• Contextualizing North American Sculpture: Topics in History, Theory and Practice: Destructive Tendencies
• Examining the Craft and Artisan traditions in North America: Arts and Crafts Ethics in Contemporary Craft
• Issues in Postcolonial Theory in Art and Art History: The Art of Migration and Diaspora in Canada
• Nationhood and Identity in Canadian Art: What is Settler-Colonial Art History? 
• Creative and Critical Literature in Art History: Of Utopian Spaces
• Issues in North American Photographic History
• Issues in Visual and Material Culture: The Gender of Design
• Aspects of Media and New Media: Indigenous Art: Experimental Film, New Media and the Digital

Consult the graduate calendar for a complete list of courses.

All new applicants will automatically be considered for a number of entrance fellowships, awards, and teaching assistantships. Students who wish to apply for provincial or federal funding should be aware that these applications must be submitted well before the program application. 

Some in-course awards are available for graduate students, including the Renata Hornstein Graduate Fellowhip in Art History, the Morrie and Diane Cohen Graduate Scholarship in Art History, the Francis and David Rubin Award, and subsidies for research travel and conference presentations. Annual calls for applications are issued to students already registered in the program. 

Please consult Concordia’s graduate funding page and departmental funding opportunities.

Faculty members are actively engaged in innovative research across a wide variety of areas:

• Indigenous art and expressive cultures
• Architecture and studies of the built environment
• Craft history, theory and methodologies
• Painting, sculpture and other media from the 16^th to the 21^st centuries
• Photographic history and theory
• Art theory and historiography
• Visual and material culture
• Museum and curatorial studies
• Cross-cultural studies and globalization
• Feminism, gender and sexuality studies
• Fashion and design histories
• New media art
• Canadian Art

The Department of Art History is home to the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canada Art, and houses the Journal of Canadian Art History, and the Canadian Women Artists History Initiative, Graduate students benefit from these academically-rich environments and, through the Faculty’s Visual Collections Repository, have access to 300,000 circulating slides and digital images that range from the pre-historic to the contemporary.

Review an inspiring gallery of thesis topics and read about some of our exceptional graduate students.

The Art History Graduate Student Association (AHGSA) is the student representative body, while the department is home to student research groups including Ethnocultural Art Histories Research Group, (EAHR), Indigenous Art Research Group (IARG) and Architecture | Concordia (A | C). 

Student research activities provide additional opportunities to curate exhibitions, publish journals, organize conferences and present papers.