You're browsing Art History Classes in Chicago, IL

Where can we start with Art? From cave paintings to the work being created right now, this speed-date with a complex discipline will whet your appetite for the art that is all around us. We’ll discuss artists’ traditional and radical roles around the world, connecting style, structure, and meaning in new ways. Week 1: Thinking globally, looking...

Liesl Olson, Chicago Renaissance: Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis This remarkable cultural history celebrates the great Midwestern city of Chicago for its centrality to the modernist movement. Author Liesl Olson traces Chicago’s cultural development from the 1893 World’s Fair through mid century, illuminating how Chicago writers revolutionized...

In this course, students learn about the variety of ways that color is considered and used as a design element. Working with current color theory principles and models, students develop color plans and concepts in relationship to individual and group projects. This research is compiled in sketchbook/notebook format and is used as reference for independent...

Learn art historical references, styles and artists each week, and then experiment with the various technique introduced for yourself. We will study and view the history, and then be set free to work on a piece in that particular form or technique.  Additional time will be given if a learner requires more instruction on how to use the materials....

Art Seminar: The Body in Art: A History of Presence & Absence The body has been both a subject and a medium of art for millennia. We’ll look at multiple forms of art that explore the body as both a visceral location and a representation of identity. Looking beyond portraiture, our focus will include feminist and queer histories, ritual practices,...

This hands-on course will teach you how to construct the geometric shapes that have played a dominant role in Islamic art and design over the centuries. With a compass and ruler, you will learn how to create the circles, triangles, quadrilaterals, polygons, and their segments that underpin the non-figural decoration of both objects and structures...

As protests against systemic racism continues, the significance of monuments has been thrust into the cultural spotlight. Who or what should they represent? Can or should they be removed? And what is to replace them? In this course we’ll focus on artists of color who address these questions by exploring ideas of history, identity and power. Skill...

Visual Earthquakes: How Photography Changed the Course of Art When in 1839, photography was first presented to the world, it caused a storm of excitement and an undercurrent of disquiet. Photographers and artists spent decades experimenting with techniques while critics debated the nature of this new, world-changing invention. This course maps the...

Remember when feminism happened, and Georgia O’Keeffe kicked butt, and now museums and the art world totally treat male and female artists with equal value? JK JK IT’S STILL SUPER BAD!  On this two-hour tour of the Art Institute of Chicago, we get three things done: We celebrate the awesome women who ARE represented We fill you in on some...

Meeting in the galleries of the Art Institute of Chicago museum, this course takes advantage of one of the largest and most significant collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, including works by Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec, and van Gogh, among others. Through lectures and discussions, students will develop...

Explore the history of photography, beginning in 1827 with the first photograph, through the age of daguerreotype portraits, the photograph’s early development as an art form, the invention of Kodak’s Box Brownie, to contemporary photography. Discover great photographers and examine how this relatively new medium has affected our culture. This...

Contemporary Art in Chicago is a hands-on introduction to Chicago's vibrant visual art scene. Each week, the class will visit museums and galleries throughout the city. Students will also have the unique opportunity to step behind-the-scenes into artists' studios and collectors' homes, where they can view works in progress, ask questions, and get...

In this seminar we’ll explore a constellation of modern and contemporary artists who have redefined the practice of painting by exploring what it is not. From Tibetan sand mandalas to Joan Miro’s burnt canvases to Katharina Grosse’s paintings/sculptures, we’ll learn how artists use ideas of absence, silence and erasure to push the boundaries...

Want to learn more about women artists in a fun forum? This discussion-based course will hone your ability to interpret and analyze works of modern and contemporary art.  Through our examination of artists traditionally excluded from the canon, we will explore and challenge preconceived notions of gender through the perspectives of female artists....