Art history is the reset button of the high school curriculum. Your student has taken six English classes and five history classes — but this is the first class that teaches looking. The text is visual, so students of every learning style start on equal footing; the skills — looking critically, thinking historically, judging with reasons — quietly transfer to everything else they do.

The year’s arc

Fall: from the painted caves of the ice age through the Fertile Crescent and Egypt, the Aegean and Greece, Rome, Jewish and Early Christian art, Byzantium, and the arts of China, Japan, and Islam. Spring: the Americas — MesoAmerica and Native American art — then the great medieval world: manuscripts, the Norse, castles, monasteries, Romanesque, and the Gothic cathedrals, ending at the doorstep of the Renaissance with Giotto, the Medici, and the birth of humanism, plus India and Africa. Along the way, monthly enrichment classes: optical illusions, color, propaganda in art, sacred art — beautiful or kitsch? — and more.

Taught in the Catholic classical tradition by a teacher whose degree — and first love — is this subject. Every image shown in class is personally curated for a Catholic classroom (see the FAQ). Four tests, a semester exam, and a final, hand-graded.