Careers
Study Art History. Do Anything.
What can I do with an Art History major?
Our recent graduates have gotten great jobs in technology, consulting, and government, while many also pursue graduate school in the humanities or sciences. A significant percentage also pursue full-time service work for a year or more, seeking to make a difference in the world by helping others.
Skills you'll learn
- Visual Analysis
- Critical thinking and reading
- Strong writing
- Use of evidence to support an argument
- Interdisciplinary field of study
- Ethical judgment and decision making
- Knowing how to plan and carry out long-term projects
- Ability to analyze and solve problems with people from different backgrounds
Sean Cotter ’15
Marketing Team Lead, Craster Design Services, London
“Art history at Notre Dame is a great, diverse curriculum. It’s such a fascinating field of study, especially if you want to look at history not from just the textbook but from what people were talking about, what people were producing, and what people thought was worthy of painting and sculpting," says Sean Cotter, who majored in art history at Notre Dame. “It has provided me with so much background for analysis of visual imagery, analysis of a problem that’s depicted in sculpture or a painting or architecture. It really teaches you how to solve a problem, and how other people have solved a problem. That’s really what a lot of art is — it’s solving a problem for a very specific context.”
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Sean Cotter ’15
Marketing Team Lead, Craster Design Services, London
“Art history at Notre Dame is a great, diverse curriculum. It’s such a fascinating field of study, especially if you want to look at history not from just the textbook but from what people were talking about, what people were producing, and what people thought was worthy of painting and sculpting," says Sean Cotter, who majored in art history at Notre Dame. “It has provided me with so much background for analysis of visual imagery, analysis of a problem that’s depicted in sculpture or a painting or architecture. It really teaches you how to solve a problem, and how other people have solved a problem. That’s really what a lot of art is — it’s solving a problem for a very specific context.”
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Tim Keller ’00
Mayor, Albuquerque, New Mexico
“The ability to understand the pulse of a city is really important in my job, and you have to do that in the same way that you would read a painting,” said Keller. “You have to pull out individual elements that you see, but you also have to understand the context of why it was painted.” Being able to analyze and understand the context, history, and circumstances of Albuquerque has helped Keller recognize and address his community’s needs. It’s just one of the many surprising ways art history has re-entered his life since earning his degree — and one of the many skills he developed in his liberal arts education that have remained a constant throughout his career.
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Katie Hazard ’97
Associate Director, Burning Man Arts
Katie Hazard, ’97, is currently the Associate Director for Burning Man Arts in Black Rock City, NV. Burning Man Arts, through art grants, mentorship, and art management programs, supports the creation of impactful, interactive artwork around the world. She oversees the selection, placement, and installation of over 400 artworks annually in Black Rock City and beyond.
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Adrian Duran ’98
Associate Professor of Art History, University of Nebraska
Inspired by his art history studies as an undergraduate at Notre Dame, Adrian R. Duran went on to get an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Delaware. As an associate professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Duran has published widely on mid-20th century Italian painting and sculpture, including his 2014 book Painting, Politics and the New Front of Cold War Italy (Ashgate/Routledge), and he edited the 2020 Journal of Latino/Latin American Studies issue “Art of the Latinx Diaspora.” In 2020-21, Duran was the Dorothy K. Hohenberg Chair of Excellence in Art History at the University of Memphis.
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Sophia Bevacqua ’17
Ph.D. student at The Institute of Fine Arts, NYU
After graduation, art history major Sophia Bevacqua, took a full-time fellowship in Rome at the Vatican Museums Patron’s Office, with seven laboratories dedicated to preserving and restoring the site’s vast collections. She worked with the laboratories to determine which works of art to restore, which methods should be used to do the work, how much each project would cost, and which of the museum's donors might be most interested in such a project. She's now pursuing a Ph.D. in art history at NYU.
99% of Art History majors found full-time employment, enrolled in graduate school, entered service programs, or joined the military within six months of graduation.
Note: Outcomes data comes from First Destination reports, a survey of recent graduates conducted by the Notre Dame Center for Career Development and Office of Strategic Planning and Institutional Research. Status is known for more than 90% of each graduating class.
Independent projects include activities such as writing a novel, making a film or fine arts project, traveling the world and other gap-year activities, internships, etc.