Where to begin?

[foxforce5five5]

Hello,

I'm brand new to this website. I just finished my BA in Art History and now I'm taking a year off to plan and apply for graduate schools. I need to start looking into programs relating to my area of interest (French "modern" art, in the broadest sense), and I am not totally sure where to start. I would really appreciate any school recommendations to start my research.

Thank you!

[starfish]

Hello foxforce,

First of all, welcome and good luck. I normally lurk around here, but I'm starting to gear up for for 2010/2011 Ph.D. application season, so I'll be posting more often. I thought I would start off by responding to your post, because I have a similar area of interest (European modern art, post-Impressionism, pre-WWI). I don't know if you're this specific in terms of time period, because there are a lot of wonderful professors who focus on French realists that I haven't included in my list (off the top of my head, I know there's a professor at Princeton and one at Cornell, can't remember their names), but here's my starting point right now:

Duke: Patricia Leighten and Mark Antliff

Yale: Sebastian Zeidler

Delaware: Margaret Werth

Virginia: Matthew Affron and Elizabeth Hutton Turner

Johns Hopkins: Michael Fried and Kathryn Tuma

I'm also limiting my search geographically somewhat, so there are undoubtedly many others out there who may fit you perfectly but aren't right for me. There are a couple of good ways to search... one is just by visiting department web pages for schools that interest you (possibly by name, location, etc.) and looking through the profiles of faculty members. I also know that CAA just released their graduate school catalog, which will undoubtedly be a phenomenal resource. Another starting point would be to go back and look at articles and books you've especially loved and start searching out the professors who wrote them. It's less obvious sometimes from webpages, so reading up on the work of a professor that you want to work with can be very important--they may focus on the same time period you're interested in, but may have totally different methodological concerns.

Anyway, I hope that helps as a jumping off point. Good luck to you, and let me know if you have any questions (I learned a lot of stuff the hard way through my MA applications).