Each week of the course is organized around a different theme; most weeks featured two lectures on topics related to that theme.
| WEEK # | THEMES | LECTURE TOPICS | RECITATIONS and field trips | KEY DATES |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction | 1. Introduction: What is Art? | ||
| 2 | Art, History, Representation | 2a. Learning to Look/Interpreting What We See 2b. The Devotional Image | Recitation topic: Thinking About Pictures | |
| 3 | Capturing the World | 3a. Pictorial Space and Perspective 3b. Media Revolutions: Paint and Print in the North | ||
| 4 | Renaissance Worlds | 4a. Worlding the Italian Renaissance 4b. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael: Making Renaissance Art | Field trip: "Adam and Eve" exhibition at the Harvard Art Museums | Tuesday: first paper due |
| 5 | Women and Men in the Renaissance | 5a. Representing Women 5b. The Status of the Artist | Recitation topic: Gender Trouble in the Renaissance | |
| 6 | Reformation / Counterreformation | 6. Art as Theater in 17th-Century Rome | Midterm review | |
| 7 | The Global Seventeenth Century | 7. Dutch Art in Global Perspective | Thursday: midterm exam | |
| 8 | Art and Power | 8a. Art and Absolutism in France and Spain 8b. Public Exhibitions: Enter the Art Critic | Field trip: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston | |
| 9 | Art and Morality | 9a. The Lure of the Antique 9b. Beyond Representation: Color and Touch | Recitation topic: The Art Museum | |
| 10 | Art and Empire | 10. Romanticism and Empire | Recitation topic: Orientalisms | Tuesday: second paper due |
| 11 | The Second Media Revolution | 11a. Photography and Photographic Truth 11b. The Artist and the City | Field trip: visit to the MIT Museum to view daguerrotypes and stereoscopes | |
| 12 | The Spaces of Modernity | 12. The Artist and the City, part 2 | ||
| 13 | Art / Anti-Art | 13a. Modernist Primitivism 13b. Surrealism and Dada | Recitation topic: Primitivism | |
| 14 | Art and After | 14a. Abstract Expressionism: Art and Politics 14b. After the Art Object: From Pop to Performance | Field trip: visit and discussion of exhibition, "Joan Jonas, Sources and Methods," MIT, ACT | Tuesday: final paper due |
| 15 | The Global Contemporary | 15. Where We Are Now; Concluding Thoughts |