Offered jointly with the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, the History of Decorative Arts and Design program leads to a master's of arts degree. Graduates go on to careers as historians, curators, and scholars in museums, universities, historic houses, auction houses, and galleries.
The curriculum focuses on the stylistic, historical, and theoretical contexts of European and American decorative arts and design from the Renaissance to the present. Object-based courses on furniture, interiors, ceramics, costume, glass, graphic design, metalwork, textiles, works on paper, and other media go beyond connoisseurship to address objects as intersections of social meaning and aesthetic theory.
Classes meet in the museum, offering students the opportunity not only to learn directly from the collection but also to work with curators, educators, visiting researchers, and designers in the museum's community of scholars. Students receive hands-on experience in museum practices and procedures, and often pursue for-credit internships at the Cooper-Hewitt and other museums, galleries, auction house archives, and historic houses around the city.
All incoming students are considered for Masters Curatorial Fellowships at the Cooper-Hewitt, which offer partial tuition remission. MA program students may also apply to teach recitation sections of undergraduate lecture classes in design history, theory, and other subjects. Student teaching assistants conduct their own classes, leading discussion and formulating and grading assignments. This paid position is an invaluable opportunity for future academics, and one rarely open to pre-doctoral students.
