One of the special features of this program is the opportunity it provides students to study directly from artworks housed in any number of Parisian museums (the Musée du Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Château de Versailles, the Musée Carnavalet, among many other world-class collections). Teaching hours are split evenly between classroom discussion and visits to museums, galleries, chateaux, and cathedrals. Michigan's faculty members are deeply committed to on-site teaching and direct educational encounters with works of art. Student exposure to the city's magnificent collections is unrivalled by any American program currently operating in Paris.
The art history curriculum for Winter 2009 consists of three courses, each of which may be counted towards both the concentration and the minor in the History of Art. Paul Franklin, the Program Director, will teach a 200-level, four-credit-hour class called "Paris-by-Site," a course designed to introduce Michigan students to Paris's remarkable urban landscape; this course may also be counted towards the concentration/minor in History or French. Howard Lay, Professor of the History of Art at Michigan, will teach two 300-level, three-credit-hour courses: "Alchemists of Revolution," which focuses on revolutionary visual culture from 1789 to 1880; and "Modernism/Modernity," an examination of the relations between modernist painting and emergent forms of mass culture from 1871 to 1914 (see below for full course descriptions). Students will receive a total of ten credit hours in History of Art for the semester.