{"id":1481,"date":"2014-10-07T17:24:18","date_gmt":"2014-10-07T21:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/ebuckhor\/?page_id=1315"},"modified":"2014-10-07T17:24:18","modified_gmt":"2014-10-07T21:24:18","slug":"think-outside-the-box","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-fall2014\/features\/think-outside-the-box\/","title":{"rendered":"Think outside the box"},"content":{"rendered":"

What can you do with an art history degree?<\/em><\/p>\n

By Maura King Scully<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Duncan-1407-575\"<\/a>
David Duncan \u201979, on the construction site of one of the many homes he has designed
Photo: Al Ferreira<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the early months of 2014, President Obama infamously told a group of Wisconsin workers, \u201cFolks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing \u2026 than they might with an art history degree.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, says Trinity Professor of Fine Arts Kathleen Curran, \u201cArt history gets beat up a lot, unfairly. People think it\u2019s a lightweight degree\u2013that it\u2019s \u2018art appreciation.\u2019 It\u2019s actually very rigorous.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Duncan \u201979, a former art history major and current architect who has his own firm in Old Lyme, Connecticut, has heard the slights before. \u201cAs with everything, if you do it really well, it can be very hard work,\u201d he says. \u201cArt history is a way of learning how to see, think, and compare. You learn how things fit together and how they came to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Art history is also an extremely versatile degree. A look at the occupations of Trinity art history majors reveals a plethora of positions: from clothing designers to fashion journalists, museum conservators and curators, gallery owners, and entrepreneurs, as well as attorneys, architects, and financial analysts, to name a few.<\/p>\n

Though understandably biased, Curran calls art history \u201cthe ultimate liberal arts,\u201d adding, \u201cOur field is fundamentally interdisciplinary. Art doesn\u2019t just happen. When you\u2019re looking at objects, you need to know about the related cultural, political, religious, and scientific history.\u201d And it doesn\u2019t stop there: students then need to be able to interpret that information, synthesize it, and write critically about it.<\/p>\n

\"Portrait040\"<\/a>
Willie Granston \u201913, on Trinity\u2019s campus
Photo: John Atashian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s not for the faint of heart.<\/p>\n

\u201cArt history is about human living. I think that\u2019s hugely important,\u201d observes Willie Granston \u201913. This fall, Granston began studies at the prestigious Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware\u2014an elite graduate program that accepts only eight students each year.<\/p>\n

Carolyn Carta \u201911, an interdisciplinary major who combined art history, studio arts, and chemistry, recently finished a master\u2019s in chemistry at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, where she researched the fading of dyes in polymers for application to art conservation. This fall she entered the materials science doctoral program at UCLA\u2019s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, where she is establishing a partnership with the Modern and Contemporary Art Research Initiative at The Getty Conservation Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cArt history prepares you for analysis of your environment,\u201d says Carta. \u201cIn art history, there\u2019s not just one answer. There are many answers. It\u2019s about how you come up with your answer, how you research it to find evidence to support it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Abigail<\/a>
Abigail Cook Stone \u201910, atop NYC\u2019s Center548 during a gathering of Young Folk, the young patrons group at the American Folk Art Museum
Photo: John Atashian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In art history, Abigail Cook Stone \u201910 found \u201can eye for design and a visual vocabulary.\u201d \u201cDesign is so important today,\u201d she continues. \u201cYou need to be able to speak to design if you\u2019re going to produce any kind of product.\u201d Stone also credits her Trinity major with honing her writing skills. \u201cThe nature of the course work calls on you to do a lot of writing. And writing is critical no matter what you end up doing\u2014whether it\u2019s writing a press release, a pitch letter, or a solicitation to a donor.\u201d In Stone\u2019s case, she wrote a senior thesis at Trinity, which was not only great experience writing but also managing a long-term, independent project.<\/p>\n

Stone put all these skills to work at Ralph Lauren in New York, where she was part of the company\u2019s art acquisition department, the unit charged with selecting artwork for all of the retail giant\u2019s outlets. She was bitten by the entrepreneur bug, however, after starting Young Folk, the young patrons group at the American Folk Art Museum, and has just enrolled in the M.B.A. program at Columbia Business School. \u201cMy best skill set is creating a vision,\u201d she says. \u201cI see myself as the nontechnical cofounder of a future company.\u201d<\/p>\n

After earning her art history degree, Trish Mairs Klestadt \u201980 ended up going to law school and becoming an attorney. Though she didn\u2019t stay in the art world, her two daughters, both Trinity art history majors, did. Lauren \u201911 is now an assistant art buyer for One Kings Lane, an online home furnishings retailer. Alexandra \u201909 worked at Sotheby\u2019s and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and is now an art title insurance underwriter at ARIS, a title insurance company. Serendipitously, she is now also following in her mother\u2019s footsteps. \u201cAlex is going to law school at night,\u201d notes Klestadt. \u201cIn the title insurance business, it\u2019s a big asset to be a lawyer. But her art resume is a home run.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Trinity, art history has the added benefit of being a small department where professors and students develop personal relationships. \u201cMy professors saw something in me that they encouraged,\u201d says Malcolm Daniel \u201978, director of the curatorial department of photographs at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. \u201cI think because it was so small, they knew me and saw my growth. I don\u2019t think that would have happened at a larger school in a larger department.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Malcolm<\/a>
Malcolm Daniel \u201978, at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Photo: F. Carter Smith<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That mentorship took Daniel to Princeton University, where he earned both a master\u2019s and a doctorate in art history. He then took a more \u201ctraditional\u201d route for an art history major, spending 23 years at New York City\u2019s Metropolitan Museum of Art, working his way up through the curatorial ranks. \u201cI always knew I wanted to work in museums,\u201d he explains. \u201cIn high school, I did a senior project at the Baltimore Museum of Art. And when I was at Trinity, I worked at the Wadsworth Atheneum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those experiences were instrumental in helping Daniel decide on a career as a curator. \u201cIt\u2019s important to make sure it\u2019s what you want to do,\u201d he says by way of advice to current majors. \u201cThings like summer internships, spring projects\u2013 those practical experiences can help make museum work less of an abstraction,\u201d he says. And the contacts students make \u201ccan also help you get a job or into graduate school.\u201d<\/p>\n

The College\u2019s Career Development Center helps as well. \u201cWe\u2019re here to support students and alumni, both\u00a0individuals seeking careers in the arts and those looking for opportunities\u00a0outside the field,\u201d says J. Violet Gannon, the center\u2019s director. \u201cWe provide space for students to self-reflect and explore their interests. We look to help them find a goodness of fit between their passions and their skills.\u201d<\/p>\n

That breadth is the beauty of a liberal arts degree like art history, according to Duncan. \u201cA liberal arts education gives you flexibility,\u201d he says. \u201cNow that people will have a number of jobs throughout their careers, it\u2019s better to be more broadly educated so you can adapt your skills to doing more than one thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gannon couldn\u2019t agree more. \u201cYou can teach someone technical skills specific to their field, but those are likely to change over time,\u201d she says. \u201cA liberal arts education teaches habits of mind that facilitate lifelong learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that way, Duncan sees art history as no different from philosophy, religion, or English. \u201cWhen you think of it, few liberal arts majors are ends in and of themselves. There often is not a direct application to the next thing you\u2019re going to do. What I learned at Trinity gave me the confidence to pursue the next step in my career.\u201d In Duncan\u2019s case, that was earning his architecture degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.<\/p>\n

After the Winterthur Program, Granston says, he sees his \u201cnext step\u201d as earning a doctorate and ultimately teaching at the college level. Asked what you can do with an art history degree, Granston\u2019s answer is simple: \u201cwhatever you want to do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What can you do with an art history degree? By Maura King Scully In the early months of 2014, President<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"parent":1464,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-full-width.php","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-fall2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1481"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-fall2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-fall2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-fall2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-fall2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-fall2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1481\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-fall2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter-fall2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}