The Department of the History of Art at the Jeffrey Loria Center for the History of Art, 190 York Street, is a department of the Division of Humanities of Yale College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. It offers introductory, intermediate, and advanced courses to students who are interested in (a) entering a major field of study in Yale College, (b) preparing for professional, academic, or museum careers, or (c) supplementing studies in other fields. The department offers a major in Yale College and a program leading to the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School. For a detailed description of courses and requirements see Yale College Programs of Study and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Programs and Policies, online at https://bulletin.yale.edu.

The history of art is concerned with a union of visual and verbal experience. It tries to explore the character and meaning of human action through a perception of works of art visually analyzed and verbally expressed. It does not ignore textual and literary evidence or any of the other materials of history, but its special relevance to human knowledge and competence lies in its own construction of the written, the seen, and the spoken. It deals with the entire human-made environment and its relation to the natural world, and therefore has offered courses in the history of all the arts from architecture and urbanism to graphics and the movies.

Students of the history of art at Yale make extensive use of University collections, such as those of the Art Gallery, the Peabody Museum, the Center for British Art, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The department profits from its relationship with the School of Art and the other professional schools and welcomes students from them.