Here you can carry out art historical and design research; apply the theories and practice of information science; design and curate digital libraries, archives, and exhibitions; and communicate arts content and design effectively across diverse cultures and societies.
Pratt students at the Morgan Library Reading Room (courtesy Polly Cancro, History of Art and Design / Library and Information Science '18)
History of Art and Design / Library and Information Science at Pratt
The MSLIS/MA History of Art and Design dual-degree program prepares you for careers in art and design, museum, and academic libraries. In this program, you will become an expert on the intersection of art and design and information, going deep into art, design, and historical archives, art and design collections, and more. With fellowship opportunities at NYC’s leading museums, libraries, and archives, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Frick Art Reference Library, and MoMA, the dual-degree program offers unique experiential learning opportunities.
Students in the dual-degree MSLIS/MA History of Art and Design program get to experience all Pratt has to offer by taking half of their program (30 credits) at the School of Information based in Manhattan, and the other half in the Department of History of Art and Design on the Brooklyn campus (30 credits). The first two years students take courses in both departments, with much of the thesis work taking place in the third year. With class sizes of just 8-12, you’ll collaborate closely with your cohort and faculty and be learning at the nexus of NYC arts and culture communities.
Internships
Internships at museums, libraries, nonprofit art organizations, and galleries provide professional opportunities in your area of interest and prepare you for future careers. Recent students have interned at prestigious institutions such as the New York Public Library, Franklin Furnace, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Study Abroad
We are pleased to offer study abroad options for dual-degree students, including a new course offered for the first time during spring break 2024: “Artist Archives: Rome/New York”. We also recently celebrated the 35th anniversary of Pratt in Venice, which is a 6-week program that occurs each June and July. For more information on Study Abroad, see where you can go.
Learning Resources
We develop disciplinary fluency in our program of study and we celebrate the interdisciplinary nature of design critical to address the plurality and complexity of the environments in which we operate. Learning resources.
Our Faculty
Pratt’s distinguished faculty of outstanding creative professionals and scholars share a common desire to develop each student’s potential and creativity to the fullest. Bringing different views, methods, and perspectives, they provide a rigorous educational model in which students make and learn. See all History of Art and Design faculty and administrators and School of Information faculty and administrators.
Our Alumni
Pratt’s distinguished alumni are leading diverse and thriving careers, addressing critical challenges and creating innovative work that reimagines our world.
Where They Work
Librarian, Photographs and Prints Division, New York Public Library
Archivist, Center for Brooklyn History at Brooklyn Public Library
IT Project Manager, J. Paul Getty Trust
Head, Reference & Reader Services, Teachers College, Columbia University
Web Collection Librarian, Columbia University Libraries
Join us at Pratt. Learn more about admissions requirements, plan your visit, talk to a counselor, and start your application. Take the next step.
Whether your goal is to advance your career, pivot to a new field, or explore your craft or groundbreaking research, our 33 graduate programs provide the rigor and support to achieve your vision. Explore our graduate programs in architecture, fine arts, design, information studies, and the liberal arts and sciences. Learn More.
You’ll find yourself at home at Pratt. Learn more about our residence halls, student organizations, athletics, gallery exhibitions, events, the amazing City of New York and our Brooklyn neighborhood communities. Check us out.
Congratulations to HAD Alumni Dylan Kaleikaumaka Hill, MA History of Art and Design ’23, and Olli Toppeta, MS Library and Information Science; MA History of Art and Design ’22, on the curation of Exquisite Relations at The Rubelle and Norman Schafler Gallery. The multidisciplinary exhibition, presented by the School of Art in collaboration with Pratt’s Department of Exhibitions, comprised painting, sculpture, photography, film, and performance by Pratt students and alumni. This is the fourth annual School of Art student and alumni exhibition to pose questions about the formation of cultural identity, with this year’s iteration presenting work that exists within and explores the queer experience.
Visit the Pratt News to read the full story.
You are invited to an HAD Faculty Conversations by Eana Kim, “Art in the Age of Machine Intelligence: From Cybernetics to Generative AI”
* This event is for Pratt community.
Date: Thursday, November 6th
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 pm
Venue: Main 212
About the Project: How do machines see? Artists have long imagined machine vision through codes, algorithms, and feedback systems. This talk traces the evolution of art’s engagement with machine intelligence, from the cybernetic experiments of the 1960s to today’s data-driven installations. Beginning with Harold Cohen’s pioneering program AARON and Vera Molnár’s algorithmic drawings, the lecture follows artists who reimagined creativity through computation. It then considers contemporary practices by Trevor Paglen, Hito Steyerl, Pierre Huyghe, Anicka Yi, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Sasha Stiles, and Refik Anadol. Engaging recent exhibitions such as Jeu de Paume’s The World Through AI, the talk reconsiders art as an interface between human, machine, and environment.
About the Speaker: Eana Kim is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the History of Art and Design at Pratt Institute. She specializes in the intersections of contemporary art, technology, and science, and has published widely as a critic and scholar, with recent writing in Artforum, Flash Art, The Brooklyn Rail, and ARTnews, among others. Before joining Pratt, she held curatorial positions at the Museum of Modern Art and NYU’s Grey Art Museum, contributing to major exhibitions including Jack Whitten: The Messenger and Signals: How Video Transformed the World. She is currently developing a book project on nonhuman intelligence in living-organism-based art.
The series of Art History 101 posts initiate with the concept of Art Movements with explanation of @edengallery and the chronological list provided by art historian Christopher P Jones.
Don’t forget to check the upcoming posts to learn more about each one of the movements in detail!
#arthistory #arthistory101 #art #artmovements #pratt #pratthad #prattinstitute
You are invited to “Heirlooms and Heiresses: How women who inherited Caribbean Slavery wealth funded British art, architecture and interiors,” by Dr. Miranda Kaufmann.
Date: Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Time: 5:30 pm
Venue: ARC E-02
If you are interested in attending, please RSVP using the link in the bio.
* This event is open to general public.
About the Project: A century or two before New York’s wealthiest families sent their daughters to marry into the British aristocracy, heiresses to equally irresistible fortunes founded on Caribbean slavery bought their way into British society. But their global stories touch unexpected people and places, from Marie Antoinette, Napoleon and America’s Founding Fathers, to India and Australia; Charleston, East Florida and New York’s Chelsea. Join Miranda to hear their stories, learn how the story of African enslavement in the Americas was not limited to the United States, and how these heiresses’ heirlooms – their portraits, fine art and furniture – are now scattered across collections globally, including the Met, the Frick, the Getty, even Windsor Castle.
About the Speaker: Dr. Miranda Kaufmann is the author of the Wolfson History Prize-shortlisted book Black Tudors: The Untold Story (2017). She read History at Christ Church, Oxford and is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. She has worked with English Heritage and the National Trust, taken her work into schools with her Teaching Black Tudors project and to the world with her free Black Tudors: The Untold Story FutureLearn course. Her second book, Heiresses: Marriage, Inheritance and Slavery in the Caribbean (2025), tells the stories of nine British female enslavers and the people they enslaved. www.mirandakaufmann.com
#historyofart #arthistory #ArtAndDesign #pratt #historyofdesign
You are invited to “Becoming Leonor Fini – Theatrical Self-Performances between Art and Life,” by Andrea Kollnitz.
* This event is for Pratt community only.
Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Time: 5:30 pm
Venue: ARC E-02
About the Project: Using theories of performativity, this talk explores Leonor Fini’s (1907-1996) self-fashioning and dressing-up practices, highlighting how her extension of artistic creative practices, from painted artworks to her self-creation through costumes, masks and fashion, allowed her to become a living artwork. Fini’s personal theatricality, photographic self-portraits and self-transformative, genderbending, transgressive dressing-up games in relation to surrealist practices, reveal the hybrid identities that made up Fini’s character. Here, the artist’s self-fashioning must be understood as a substantial creative practice developing and confirming artistic and personal autonomy and pointing to an extended concept of art where creation and self-creation powerfully enable each other.
About the Speaker: Andrea Kollnitz is Professor in Art History and Head of the Art History Department at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University. Her research focuses on the self-fashioning of avant-garde artists; art and nationalism; the Nordic avant-garde from transnational perspectives. Kollnitz is co-editor of the books "Fashion and Modernism" (Bloomsbury 2018), "A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries, vol 2: 1925-1950" (Brill, 2019), "Fashion, Performance & Performativity" (Bloomsbury, 2021), and "Fashion Aesthetics and Ethics" (Bloomsbury, 2023). She is currently leading a research project on Surrealism in Sweden and recently published "Becoming Leonor Fini: Theatrical Self-Performances between Art and Life" (Bloomsbury, 2025).
#historyofart #pratt #arthistory #artanddesign
Professor Eana Kim and her Art Since the Sixties class visited MoMA for a hands-on session of object-based research and discussion. Students explored Pop Art and Fluxus in the galleries, bringing their classroom debates to life among iconic works by George Maciunas, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, and more!
The information you see changes the world that you perceiv. Across four core programs, we explore everything from algorithms to archives with the goal of improving lives and culture through information. Through hands-on learning experiences, you’ll not only learn how to manage knowledge and information, but how to make it useful, available, and accessible to all.
To learn more about our masters programs, sign-up to attend an upcoming information session. Next session is September 9 at 6pm ET. Link to sign-up is available in our bio.
Find out the speaker at our 6th Annual Ethics & Technology Forum, as well as student, alumni and faculty news, in our August '25 newsletter! Link available in our bio.
The MSLIS/MA History of Art and Design dual-degree program prepares students for careers in art, museum, and academic libraries. With fellowship opportunities taking place at NYC’s leading museums, libraries, and archives, such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the dual-degree program offers unique opportunities for experiential learning.
This program consists of 30 credits at the School of Information and 30 credits at the Department of History of Art and Design for a total of 60 credits, which must be completed with a B average or higher. Students in the dual-degree program generally take one or two classes in each program per semester (3–4 courses, 9–12 credits).
Students in the dual-degree MSLIS/MA History of Art and Design satisfy the learning outcomes of each of the respective degrees.
MS Library and Information Science
Throughout the LIS program, students will create a digital portfolio to highlight the work they have completed and demonstrate they have met the program’s five student learning outcomes:
Foundations of Library and Information studies – Apply core concepts and theories to information collection, organization and access in multiple environments.
User-centered services – Students can meet information needs of diverse user communities across multiple communication formats (e.g. oral, written, visual, interactive).
Technology – Students can select and apply tools and technologies used in the field to improve information functions.
Research – Investigate information environments and users’ needs, behaviors, and experiences through appropriate research methods and analysis.
Ethical/Creative/Critical practice – Apply core ethical principles to professional practice and understand the broad impact of information on society. Students can raise critical questions about information, its production, dissemination, storage and preservation.
MA History of Art and Design
Graduates are able to articulate the mutually constitutive nature of historical changes in social, political and economic conditions in the fields of art, design, and cultural production.
Graduates are able to describe, research and analyze the forms of cultural artifacts and monuments.
Graduates demonstrate a critical engagement with the discipline’s tools and methods.
Graduates have the skills to craft lines of inquiry and perform in-depth research, including the use of relevant languages, that results in original analysis and interpretation.
