Bronte1985

Sounds like you're on the right track!

A lit review will not cut it, nor will a paper that analyzes a work of art "in a variety of ways" without a coherent argument. Your writing sample needs do several things. It needs to put forward an original argument. It will also need to demonstrate that you can do visual analysis, and that you can do so in dialogue with other scholars while drawing on relevant primary sources, both textual and visual. This is the kind of work you will be expected to produce in grad school, and the admissions committee will want to make sure that you're ready to do it. More than that, they want to know that you're ready to become a professional scholar and make a contribution to your chosen field. If you have not written this kind of paper before, you may want to look into getting a masters to get more research experience.

Changing specializations is not uncommon but you will almost certainly need to get a MA in East Asian art first. Committees will want to make sure you're actually ready to make a scholarly contribution to the field, so you'll need to show them that you can actually read advanced Japanese texts (and preferably speak near-fluently as well) and that you have a good understanding of the field. Without a couple of years of formal training and an MA thesis in East Asian art, I'm afraid few PhD committees will be convinced that you're ready.

First of all, there is a very small client pool for this kind of thing so you certainly won’t find any “big companies” specializing in Art History. There are, however, a good number of freelancers out there, many of whom have PhDs. I would google around. That said, while I’m sure a good editor could improve your materials, I’m not sure one will really be worth your money. I would ask one of your professors and perhaps a smart friend, especially if they’ve been through this already, to read a draft first.

There's also the question of how personal to make your statement. If you have a compelling story/background that is relevant to your research program, then by all means bring it in, but keep the focus on your scholarly matters. This is not (primarily) about your personal journey, though in certain case elements of that story may be germane.

Writing a statement of purpose can be daunting but their purpose (as it were) is pretty simple. The admissions committee wants to know who you are as a scholar, and they want make sure of two things: 1) that you're prepared to do top-level grad work and 2) that you're a good fit for the program. That means you need to communicate that you have an excellent understanding of the field, a well articulated research program that will make a contribution to said field (which should be specific but not too specific; you probably shouldn't propose a specific dissertation topic but you need to demonstrate that you'll be ready to propose one in 2 years), and an understanding of the stakes of your research program (the "so what"); it also means that you need to explain why the professors and/or resources at the school you're applying to make that program the ideal one for you. What are the questions and issues that will drive your research? Why are they important? How do they relate to conversations and debates happening in your proposed field and the discipline more broadly? Why are you especially qualified to pursue those questions? These things are pretty formulaic in their form (and if you end up going to grad school you will be writing many of them in the form of fellowship proposals and cover letters), but this document *should* be exciting for you as well as your committee. This is your chance to show your passion, your intelligence, and your knowledge. Why do you want to spend the next 8 years or so of your life in grad school? Good statements of purpose have a certain spark, but there's really no secret; really, you just need to know what you're talking about and write clearly, concisely and eloquently! That doesn't mean it will be easy. Statements of purpose are straightforward but they're hard to get right. You'll probably have to do a lot of soul searching and write many drafts before you're "there." Don't worry about getting in wrong the first time. You probably will. Keep revising and, if you are indeed ready for grad school, you will end up with a great statement. I also suggest you talk to your professors about your statement and ask them if they'll read a draft.

Make sure you don't put the catalogue under "publications." Securing image rights doesn't count as a publication (in any case, publications at this stage of your career are totally unnecessary and possibly a bad idea). You can list that you secured image rights for the catalogue under a brief description of your fellowship, but honestly that is a skill that is pretty irrelevant to grad school work, so you can leave it off; the admissions committee will not care (unless one of them is in the final stages of preparing a book for publication and needs a research assistant who knows what they're doing! ?).

Your resumé sounds very strong, but a strong resumé will only get you so far. What will distinguish your application from the hundreds of others is the quality of your writing sample, personal statement, and letters of recommendation. Your writing sample needs to show that you're ready to do grad work at the highest level. That means, in addition to being well written, demonstrating an ability to develop a clear and original argument, carry out sophisticated visual analysis, work with primary sources (hopefully in at least one language other than English), and engage meaningfully and critically with secondary scholarship and theory. Your personal statement needs to demonstrate an awareness of the key debates and methods in your field, as well as a clear and well thought out research agenda that complements the research of whomever you want to work with. Your letters of recommendation need to attest that you are among the strongest students your professor has taught, that you've mastered the skills I listed above, and that your work to date demonstrates potential for growth into a mature scholar. You can't control what your letters writers write about you, but hopefully you've developed relationships with them over the years so they can write knowledgeably about you and your work. You should speak to them early and often about your goals, and hopefully they can give you more advice.

The days of becoming a curator with just an MA are largely over, no matter where you degree is from. It's still possible in contemporary art and at smaller regional museums, and I've heard of isolated cases where the curator had accumulated a lot of curatorial experience and published, but otherwise a PhD is pretty much a prerequisite now.

Also, as a side note, because I feel ethically obligated to say it: do make sure you explore other career paths while you're in college. There are many wonderful things about getting a PhD, but the job market is horrendous and just when you think it couldn't get any worse it gets worse. You want to make sure you fully understand the sacrifices a PhD entails and that really, really want it. You will learn and experience a lot in the next four years. It may confirm that you want a PhD--or not. All I'm saying is, keep an open mind.

It really depends on what your local school is and what opportunities you would have there. That said, if you do well at Barnard and cultivate relationships with some of your professors, you should have no trouble at all getting into a top--fully funded--program. It seems like half the PhDs I know did their undergrad at Columbia/Barnard.

The difference in how you'd write isn't so much a question of style or tone as of subject, scope, methodology, and contribution. Each journal occupies a particular niche in the academic landscape and addresses a particular audience. The Art Bulletin, Art History, and Oxford Art Journal are general art history journals: methodologies can vary, but articles submitted to those journals should make a clear disciplinary contribution, beyond a particular field or subfield. There are differences among these journals, but not, as far as I can see, very significant ones, beyond length. For articles that make a more field-specific contribution, there are many journals that have a more narrow focus, like October. October is journal dedicated almost exclusively to articles that deal with modern and contemporary art but, unlike, say, Art Journal, their articles tend to engage a particular set of theoretical concerns (Neo-Marxist, post-structuralist theory, traditionally). Grey Room, on the other hand, concentrates on Media Studies, so, for example, you probably wouldn't be publishing on "high art" there, unless you were rethinking it using the conceptual tools of media theory. (October and Grey also happen to be more "cliquey" and tend to publish people the editorial board already knows--last I checked, October doesn't even do double blind peer review). So the main difference among journals is audience: who's reading the articles. Who do you want to reach with your article? What scholarly conversations is your work taking part in and how big of a contribution is making. In terms of figuring out the differences among the journals, the best thing to is to read a few issues as well as the journals' mission statements. The differences are sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious. If you picked up an issues of Oxford Art Journal and compared it to an issue of the Burlington, for instance, I think the differences would be pretty clear: articles in OAJ make extended, conceptually sophisticated arguments grounded in a broader historical and/or theoretical context, while the articles in the Burlington focus more on connoisseurial and/or documentary topics. So keep reading. Especially if you start at the top journals, you may have to submit to a few places before you get your article accepted; sometimes you may have to reframe it, other times not. Hope that helps!

Hmmmm....that's tricky. There just aren't too many research assistant positions out there, unfortunately. The big museums do have them, and it used to be that all you needed was an MA, but because there's such a glut of PhDs out there, they're increasingly being filled by people with their doctorate. I should warn you, though, research assistant jobs pay pretty poorly and advancement (say, to a curatorial position) is very difficult without a PhD. Before you take the plunge and enroll in grad school (MA or PhD), I think you need to reflect on the kind of job you want and do some research about how many positions in the field exist and what qualifications are necessary. I totally understand the desire to grad school and I understand your love of historical research, but, unless you have independent means, you want to make sure that all the time and money and energy that you need to invest to go to grad school will actually help you land a viable job at the end. Good luck!

You don't say what your career goals are. You don't want to be a professor, but if you want to be, say, a curator, you'll need a PhD. MAs in art history don't open that many job opportunities on their own. If you want to work in museum education or administration, or in a gallery, you don't necessarily need an MA; and a PhD likely wouldn't help you at all. So the question in, why are you going to grad school? Will either an MA or PhD help you achieve you goals? On principle, given how low salaries are in the art world, I would be wary of taking on too much debt to fund an MA. On the other hand, spending 7+ years getting a degree, making a paltry stipend, especially when you're older and don't want the kind of jobs a PhD is supposed to prepare you for, isn't exactly sound financial planning either. So I think you need to do some serious introspection about what you really want.

No question that academia has been exclusionary for a long time and that it needs to change and, importantly, that it is changing, albeit slowly. Still, while some may be speaking from a place of disappointment and bitterness about their experiences, I don't think anyone here is "gatekeeping." They're asking prospective students to be realistic. Idealism is nice, but reality is reality, and conditions are what they are. You can decide to fight and struggle to make change--and bravo to you if you do!--but before you do decide that, you better be damn sure you know what you're getting yourself into. Knowing how exploitative and cynical the profession is, is it really worth it? Can you really imagine doing nothing else? Can you effect greater change elsewhere, while facing fewer professional hurdles? (You mention social work: well let me tell you, art history is not social work; no matter how socially engaged your work is, scholarship in the humanities, especially art history, is mostly inward looking, not to say selfish. Even within the institutions of the university and the museum themselves, art historians don't really have the power to effect systemic change. If you make it to the top, you may have prestige and cultural capital, but no one in the administration will listen much to you. So if you want to make change on that front, become an administrator.) None of this is to say that being an art historian can't be rewarding and valuable work, and short term yes, maybe hiding out in grad school for a few years isn't the worst idea. But before you take the plunge, I just urge you to square your idealism with the often depressing reality on the ground and take some time to be practical about what you can actually achieve and what you actually are willing to sacrifice to get there. This advice is not a personal attack or an effort to take "gatekeep" or take you down a peg.