Pratt’s an exceptional place to study art and design history. From our landmarked campus you’ll have access to NYC’s premier international private collections, libraries, museums, studios, and galleries, as well as leading artists, designers, historians, and theorists.
History of Art and Design at Pratt
Join us in New York City, the art capital of the United States, for an immersive education in the history of art and design. Specialized foundational, art and design history, and liberal arts courses prepare you to conduct research, critically analyze and describe works of art, and place them in their social context. Studios and electives in your chosen concentration provide an in-depth program of study and experiential learning opportunities to practice traditional and new visual arts techniques.
The Experience
Taking specially designed foundation and survey courses, students in the BFA program will engage with a range of liberal arts disciplines including philosophy, literature, and criticism of the history of art and design, as well as studio courses. You’ll collaborate closely with your team, faculty, and community partners to learn the skills needed to create strategies and systems that meet real-world challenges.
Electives and Seminars
You’ll have the opportunity to take electives in film and design, architecture, non-Western, pre-Renaissance, Renaissance to Rococo, and 19th-, 20th-, or 21st-century art, theory and methodology, and chemistry of art. Major-specific seminars are available from your first through senior years, on topics that include the role of New York as a cultural capital, critical and theoretical models, and art and social justice.
Study Abroad
Immersing yourself in another culture is an incredible experience that can extend the boundaries of creativity. Study abroad programs are an integral part of the college experience, and Pratt has deep connections with university partners around the world. Study in Paris with the Pratt in Paris summer program. 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, visit Pratt’s Study Abroad page.
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. Learn about 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.
Our Alumni
Pratt’s distinguished alumni are leading diverse and thriving careers, addressing critical challenges and creating innovative work that reimagines our world.
Success Stories
Ready for More?
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You are invited to an HAD Faculty Conversations by Philip Ording, “Anni Albers’s Trigonometry”
* This event is for the Pratt community.
Date: Thursday, November 20th
Time: 12:00 – 1:00 pm
Venue: Main 210
About the Project: Anni Albers (1899-1994) is perhaps most widely known as a textile artist but she was also an accomplished printmaker. This talk will present ongoing research into the geometric character of Albers’s graphic work, with a focus on trigonal designs. These works—etchings, screen prints, and photo-offsets—display intricacies that approach symmetry while skirting it. Our aim is to explore this effect in different contexts that hopefully shed light on how it is achieved. This is joint work with Brenda Danilowitz.
About the Speaker: Philip Ording is a mathematician and writer whose work explores the intersections of mathematics, art, and language. He is Associate Professor in the Department of Math & Science and a Center K-12 Instructor.
1 day ago
You are invited to “Art as Social Cartography: Tracing Communities in Malaysia’s Everyday Landscapes,” by Kenneth Wong See Huat.
* This event is open to the general public.
Date: Monday, November 24, 2025
Time: 5:30 pm
Venue: Alumni Reading Room
About the Project: This lecture introduces socially engaged art practices in Malaysia, where art intersects with heritage, memory, and community. Drawing on projects such as Bangsar Heritage Walks, Siamese Reversed food-art performance, and the proposed Jenjarom New Village digital cultural mapping initiative, Kenneth Wong See Huat reflects on how artists and curators reimagine local narratives through collaboration and place-based storytelling. The talk also revisits a series of guerrilla exhibitions in alternative and public spaces across Greater Kuala Lumpur, offering insights into the evolving ecosystem of socially grounded art and the role of curators in shaping inclusive cultural dialogue.
About the Speaker: Kenneth Wong See Huat is a curator and heritage consultant from Malaysia whose work explores cultural memory, community engagement, and contemporary art in Southeast Asia. Currently an Asian Cultural Council Fellow based in New York, he has developed participatory and site-specific projects such as Bangsar Heritage Walks, the Siamese Reversed food-art performance, and the Jenjarom New Village digital cultural mapping initiative. His practice spans guerrilla exhibitions in alternative and public spaces across Greater Kuala Lumpur, connecting art, heritage, and everyday life. Kenneth serves on the board of ICOMOS Malaysia (2024-2027) and has written widely on art, culture, and urban transformation.
#art #ArtHistory #pratthad
3 days ago
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.
2 weeks ago
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.
3 weeks ago
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
4 weeks ago
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
1 month ago
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
1 month ago
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!
1 month ago
Pratt will again join with other partners throughout the five boroughs to be part of Open House New York (OHNY). OHNY is a unique opportunity to share our campus and welcome fellow New Yorkers to Pratt. It promotes broad, unparalleled access to the city—to the places, people, projects, systems, and ideas that define New York and its future. Through their year-round programming, including the annual OHNY Weekend festival, OHNY offers a citywide platform for education, exploration, and engagement about the connections between quality of place and quality of life for all New Yorkers.
Launched in 2003, Open House New York Weekend is an annual festival that opens hundreds of noteworthy or significant places across the five boroughs to foster discovery and delight for New Yorkers and visitors alike.
Participants are invited to the Pratt campus to take a self-guided tour of the sculpture garden or participate in an HAD facilitated guided campus tour (reservations required). The tour will provide access to spaces not usually open to non-Pratt community members. #OHNYwknd
Follow our social media @hadpratt and @openhousenewyork on Instagram or @hadpratt and @ohny on Twitter to learn more. Also learn more at ohny.org/weekend.
#OHNYwknd #ohny #nyc #historyofart ##OHNYwknd #ohny #nyc #historyofart ##historyofdesignhistoryofdesign
2 months ago
