Pratt’s an exceptional place to study art and design history and theory. From our landmarked campus you’ll have access to NYC’s premier international private collections, libraries, museums, studios, and galleries, as well as the opportunity to work with leading artists, designers, historians, and theorists.
Join us in New York City, the art capital of the United States, for an immersive education in the history of art and design. Explore the effects of gender, class, politics and religion intersect with art and cultures that created it. Gain a wide perspective in theory and design methods and artistic expression in art, architecture, film, and literature. The liberal arts curriculum, including foreign language study, prepares you to research and critically analyze art and literature.
The Experience
IXD students Wuke Zhou, Yuki Shimano, and Olivia Turpin at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (photo by Shih Wen Huang)
Interdisciplinary and socially engaged, the History of Art and Design BA provides a broad foundation from which students build critical and analytical capacities to confront complex questions. Drawing on disciplines ranging from sociology, anthropology, linguistics, and economics, students go beyond aesthetic consideration to consider complex questions and evolving challenges.
With class sizes of just 8-12, 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, design, 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
Mosaic restorer Giovanni Cucco explains his work at SS. Maria e Donato to graduate student Amy Ungricht (photograph by Kate McElhiney)
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.
Learning Resources
We develop disciplinary fluency in our program of study and we celebrate the interdisciplinary nature of art and 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.
Join us at Pratt. Learn more about admissions requirements, plan your visit, talk to a counselor, and start your application. Take the next step.
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.
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!
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
You are invited to an HAD Faculty Conversations by Kate Minniti, “More than countless trinkets: Egyptian objects in Archaic Sicily (776-480 BCE).”
* This event is for Pratt community.
Date: Wednesday, October 8th, 2025
Time: 12:00 – 1:00 pm
Venue: Main 210
About the Speaker: Kate Minniti holds a PhD in Classical Archaeology from the University of British Columbia, BC, and degrees in Egyptian Archaeology from UCL and History of Art and Archaeology from NYU. She has been working as a field archaeologist around the Mediterranean for more than a decade, and she is a senior member of the NYU-UniMi archaeological expedition in Selinunte, Italy. Her main research interests are Archaic-Period connectivity and local responses to globalization in the Mediterranean. She is also interested in reception studies, and since 2013 has been exploring and publishing on the representation of Ancient Egypt in video games.
About the Project: Sicily has yielded roughly 300 Egyptian-looking objects, commonly referred to as Aegyptiaca, found in Archaic (ca. 776-480 BCE) archaeological contexts. Earlier studies have focused only on the formal elements of the artifacts, and even less often have they framed the data in the context of pan-Mediterranean trends. My research sits at the intersection of trade, politics, and religion, as it focuses not only on the roles that Aegyptiaca played in the lives of the inhabitants of Sicily – as religious and élite objects – but also on how their use can help us reassess Sicily’s position in Archaic-period Mediterranean networks of trade and exchange.
Artwork Spotlight: Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884–86)
Seurat’s monumental painting is one of the most celebrated works of Post-Impressionism. Instead of using broad brushstrokes, Seurat employed a method called pointillism, applying countless small dots of pure color that blend in the viewer’s eye.
Why It Matters:
Introduced scientific approaches to color and perception
Transformed Impressionist spontaneity into calculated structure
Captures modern Parisian leisure life with timeless rhythm
The painting is not just a scene of people relaxing by the Seine. It is also a study of light, atmosphere, and the psychology of vision. Seurat sought to merge art and science, creating a new way of seeing that still fascinates audiences today.
#art #arthistory #arthistory101 #pratt
“Less is more.” – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Minimalism was not just a style for Mies van der Rohe, it was a philosophy of design. His buildings and furniture stripped away ornament to reveal clarity, proportion, and precision. The phrase “less is more” continues to inspire designers and architects to this day, reminding us that simplicity can be the most powerful form of expression.
💡 The evolution of lighting design tells a story of innovation and atmosphere. From ancient oil lamps to iconic modern fixtures and today’s smart LEDs, each era has redefined how we live, work, and experience space. ✨ #DesignEvolution #LightingDesign
You are invited to an HAD Faculty Conversations by Caterina Pierre, “Trust in the Soul: Attilio Piccirilli’s Fragilina (1923) and the Beginnings of Modernism in American Figurative Sculpture.”
* This event is for the Pratt community.
Date: Wednesday, September 17th, 2025
Time: 12:00 – 1:00 pm
Venue: Main 210
About the Speaker: Caterina Y. Pierre, PhD, has taught at Pratt since 2008. She received her doctorate from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2005 where her specialty was nineteenth century sculpture. Her book Genius Has No Sex: The Sculpture of Marcello (1836-1879) was published by Editions de Penthes/Editions Infolio, in 2010. Caterina’s book Redefining the Hero in Tomb Sculpture, 1871-1901: Monument as Memory in France, Italy and the United States is forthcoming from Routledge. Since 2015, Caterina has taught and published on art crime, and her article “The Durig Scrapbook: Notes on the Silent Forger,” was published in the Journal of Art Crime (Spring 2022).
About the Project: Attilio Piccirilli’s Fragilina (1923, Metropolitan Museum of Art) will be analyzed in connection with an earlier sculpture by the artist entitled A Soul (1909, unlocated), a work that is stylistically and thematically connected to earlier nineteenth century Italian Purismo sculpture. Fragilina is a key sculpture in Piccirilli’s oeuvre, in that it marks a shift from his earlier figures to more Symbolist and abstract forms found in the work of his direct contemporaries. The title “Fragilina” references the negative experiences of Italian American immigrants in the United States, and the sculpture also attempts to bring the form into a new stylistic range.
The Anglepoise Lamp was first created by engineer George Carwardine, who applied his knowledge of springs and levers to design a lamp that could move fluidly and hold any position. Soon after, the Herbert Terry & Sons company helped refine and manufacture the design, making it accessible for both industrial and domestic use.
This partnership turned the Anglepoise into much more than a technical invention. It became a design icon that balanced practicality with elegance, a lamp that has illuminated homes, offices, and studios for nearly a century.
Kandinsky’s Composition VIII marks a turning point in modern art. Painted after his time at the Bauhaus, the work reflects his deep interest in geometry, balance, and the spiritual language of abstraction. Circles, lines, triangles, and curves float across the canvas, creating rhythm and harmony without relying on traditional representation.
Rather than depicting objects, Kandinsky sought to evoke emotion through pure form and color. He believed that geometric abstraction could act like music, speaking directly to the soul.
✨ A milestone of abstract art, Composition VIII remains one of Kandinsky’s most celebrated works and a cornerstone of Bauhaus visual language.
The BA program affords a grounding in the philosophy, literature, and criticism of the history of art and design. Students will take specially designed foundation courses and the survey classes. They will continue with additional credits in liberal arts (English, humanities, sciences, social sciences, and foreign language) and electives. Majors will take upper-level 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. The BA also features major-specific seminars from the first year through the senior year. Seminar topics include the role of New York as a cultural capital, critical and theoretical models, and art and social justice.
Undergraduates have an understanding of their own cultural environments as well as their places within them.
Undergraduates are able to use tools of critical inquiry to explore gender, class, politics, religious practices, conditions and materials of production, aesthetic expression, and the economics of the market within their larger geographic, historical, theoretical, and social contexts.
Undergraduates in the B.A. degree will be familiar with a foreign language after four semesters of study.
