Facilities

Tiarna Doherty Goldstein leads a gallery talk in Mechanical Hall Gallery
Ph.D. candidate Tiarna Doherty Goldstein leads a gallery talk on the exhibition The Art of Elizabeth Catlett: From th​e Collection of Samella Lewis in Mechanical Hall Gallery. (Photograph by Kelsey Underwood)

Old College

 

The Department of Art History and faculty offices are located in the Old College building. Old College is situated adjacent to the Department of Art & Design facilities, and the proximity of the buildings is conducive to a sense of artistic community. Small lecture courses and seminars are conducted in Old College, and all students are invited to use the lounge and study room in the building. Old College also contains the Old College Gallery. The collection includes examples of painting, sculpture, drawing, the graphic arts, and photography representing Western and non-Western civilizations and cultures. Students taking art history and museum studies courses have the opportunity to assist in assembling exhibitions and may work with original art objects. Works from the collection are also frequently used as teaching aids by the art history faculty.

 

Visual Resources Center

Images are central to the study of art history. The department's Visual Resources Center administers a rapidly growing library of over 100,000 digital images for faculty and student use. UD students have access to this collection online through Artstor, and they are free to use these images in term papers, seminar presentations and other class projects. Many faculty members make​ images available to their students through course websites, Artst​or and Canvas.

 

University Library

The University of Delaware Library includes the Esther I. Schwartz Collection in the American Decorative Arts, the George M.A. Hanfmann Professional Library of Ancient Art, the Lloyd and Edith Havens Goodrich-Albert Pinkham Ryder Archive, a special collection of books and rare ephemera on Italian Futurism, and books on museum studies and art conservation. The general collection of books, catalogs and periodicals in European and American art is quite extensive. The Winterthur Library is also open to students in art history.

Frequent field trips to major museums and to architectural sites in Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York and Washington, D.C., give students first-hand contact with original works of art. There is also an active program of guest lectures; speakers representing a wide range of interests and opinions are frequently invited to give lectures to which the entire University community is invited.