Stanford University

Stanford is recognized as one of the world’s leading universities. Established more than a century ago by founders Jane and Leland Stanford, the university was designed, as clearly stated in the Founding Grant, to prepare students “for personal success and direct usefulness in life” and “promote the public welfare by exercising an influence on behalf of humanity and civilization.” Today Stanford University remains dedicated to finding solutions to the great challenges of the day and to preparing our students to become the next generation of leaders. Multidisciplinary research and teaching are at the heart of recent university-wide initiatives on human health, the environment and sustainability, international affairs and the arts. These initiatives offer our faculty and students opportunities for collaboration across disciplines that will be key to future advances.

Stanford University’s Department of Art & Art History, currently comprised of 26 core faculty (as well as numerous adjunct faculty and post-doctoral fellows), is an interdisciplinary department offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in art history, art practice, film studies, and documentary filmmaking. Department courses offer opportunities for students to gain enhanced understanding of the meaning and purpose of the arts, their historical development, their role in society, and their relationship to other disciplines in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Work in the classroom, museum, and studio is designed to explore the historical and cultural meanings of works of art, to intensify visual perception of formal and expressive means, and to encourage insight into a variety of technical processes involved in the production of art, architecture, film, and design across a broad chronological and geographical range. The Department is housed in the McMurtry Building, located next to the Cantor Arts Center and Anderson Collection on the Stanford campus. The McMurtry Building opened in 2015 and offers a 100,000-square-foot space to unite the making and studying of art under one roof, and presents multiple opportunities for exhibitions, performances, and programs.

Above: McMurtry South Entry. Photo: Linda A. Cicero/Stanford News Service.