Master of Art in Liberal Studies

Areas of Concentration: Art and Art History

These are some examples of programs of study that other MALS students have pursued in the past. They are meant to give you a sense of the kind of program that you might create with us. Each program of study includes courses taken as one-on-one independent studies with Skidmore faculty, traditional graduate-level courses taken in classrooms at universities across the country, as well as the required introductory seminar. Our students also earn credit through transfer of prior graduate credit, supervised internships, and assessment of prior experiential learning.

• Program focus: Art, Artist, Audience

  Coursework
  Master's Seminar
  Brain, Self, Culture
  Painting
  Vision & Visuality
  Art Museum as Educator
  Contemporary Art Histories
  Pedagogy and the Production of Presence
  Contemporary Art in Context
  19th Century French Art and the Origins of the Art Museum

  Final Project
  “The Artist and the Museum: Individual and Institution”

• Program focus: Visual Culture and the Museum

  Coursework
  Master’s Seminar
  Studies in 20th Century Art
  History of Photography
  Art Museum as Educator
  The Persistence of Memory: Photographs of Atget and Novels of Proust
  Reading Photographs: Words and Images
  Photographic Conservation
  Developments of Style: Portrait Daguerrotypes of Southworth and Hawes
  Material Visions: American Victorianism to Modernism

  Final Project
  “Packaging the Picture: Protective and Promotional Function of 19th Century Frames”

• Program focus: Cross-Cultural Archeologies through the Fiber Arts

  Coursework
  Master’s Seminar
  Archeological Field Studies
  Africa in Antiquity
  African Art
  World of the Maya
  Pre-Columbian Art
  Taos Arts
  Ancient Andean Art and Culture
  Native American Textile Arts

  Final Project
  “Chullus in Cusco: Hats and Identity in the Andes”