Art History and Museum Studies

Every picture tells a story. Every object has a history.

As a major in our Art History and Museum Studies program, the only of its kind housed in a museum, you will gain the academic and technical expertise required for looking at, handling, speaking, and writing about art, artifacts, and their vital role in human culture.

With the Polk Museum of Art as your home base, your degree in Art History and Museum Studies will take you around the globe and across millennia as you come to understand the aesthetic, cultural, political, and social significance of art, artifacts, architecture, and visual culture upon the history of our world. Delve into visual analysis, archaeology, anthropology, literary and art criticism, philosophy, and even science and the business of art, as you explore the inner workings of the museum world and experiment with research methods and conservation techniques.

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Top Reasons

Expert Faculty

As an art history and museum studies student, you will have the unique opportunity to study — and work one-on-one — with a museum director and chief curator as your professor, advisor, and mentor, along with art and art history professors who excel in their knowledge of the field.

Study Abroad

Immerse yourself in art history and museum studies. Visit the hubs of the art world with faculty-led study abroad trips to Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin and our Junior Journey trip to New York City.

Practical Experience

As an art history and museum studies student, you will have opportunities to help install and manage art exhibitions both at the college's Melvin & Burks Galleries and at the Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College alongside professionals and visiting artists.

Tailored Career Paths

Art History and Museum Studies’ multi-disciplinary nature allows you to pair it with other degree paths to meet your unique career goals. Pair art history and museum studies with a communications major or minor for a career in social media or film, or with business for a career in marketing or non-profit management.

Meet Our Mocs

Andrew Den Boggende

Rachel Dipofi

Sera Shaw

I can pursue a multiplicity of interests, be them art conservation-focused, docent and historian-based, or creatively imaginative. While the field itself hosts these copious options, the FSC program offers unique opportunities by way of direct work and internships with the Polk Museum of Art, and even the first collegiate At History and Museum Studies Journal! Everyone in this program brings beautifully varied perspectives on life.

Sera Shaw

Polk Museum of Art At Florida Southern College

Housed inside the Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College, the Department of Art History and Museum Studies is a short walk from the main campus.

polk museum of art

Florida Southern College’s affiliation with the Polk Museum of Art gives students the unique opportunity to study — and work one-on-one — with a museum director and chief curator as their professor, advisor, and mentor, along with gifted professors who excel in their knowledge of the field. The Museum offers semester-long and competitive paid summer internships, which enables students to collaborate with Museum professionals on exhibition research, managing Museum collections, and assisting with gallery tours, visitor services, and camps.

Students in the Art History and Museum Studies department are the focus of a program designed for them, centered on the history of art and their own immersion in the academic and professional applications of it.

Featured Faculty

H. Alexander Rich

My primary goal as a professor of Art History and Museum Studies is to provide students with the tools they need to study art and the world of museums critically. In the classroom, I have three overarching objectives for my students: that they learn how to look at art, how to talk about art, and how to write about art. At the Museum, I strive to offer students the opportunity to work with objects firsthand and to gain transformative, pre-professional experiences that can set them on a path toward long-term careers in the field. More than anything else, by honing students' innate skills of observation and critical thinking, I want them to understand why the history of the artworks we study — along with the cultural spaces in which we exhibit, preserve, and learn from them — is as essential as the art itself.

Clubs And More

We’re home to a chapter of Kappa Pi, the Art History Club, and the international student honorary art society.

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Related Programs

Art Education Graphic Design History

Program Details

AVAILABLE IN:

Minor

Admission Requirements

First-Years

All freshman applicants to Florida Southern Colleges full-time degree programs must submit the following information:

A completed application form
An official high school transcript
SAT and/or ACT scores (unless applying Test-Optional)
Academic recommendation

Transfers

Applying to Florida Southern as a transfer student is easy.

A completed application form
Personal statement
All official college transcripts
Social standing form

If transferring less than 24 credits, we also need your:

Official high school transcript
SAT and/or ACT scores

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Internationals

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Scholarships Available