The School of Art and Design History and Theory offers a comprehensive menu of courses in design studies, fashion studies, visual culture studies, spatial design studies, art history, and art and design criticism and writing to undergraduates from across Parsons and The New School.
The undergraduate curriculum educates Parsons and New School students in visual literacy, research and writing skills, and critical analyses, and provides them with a systematic understanding of how art, design, and visual culture operate in various geographical and historical contexts. This helps students develop the intellectual rigor necessary to become the next generation of art and design leaders. Through the use of multidisciplinary approaches, students learn how to imaginatively frame questions and consider problems from multiple perspectives.
The school's curriculum includes a core of required courses for all Parsons students, depending on their degree program, as well as a broad range of electives. Core courses carry the Parsons student from freshman to senior year. Electives are organized into a series of pathways: Design Studies, Fashion Studies, Visual Culture Studies, Spatial Design Studies, Art History, and Art and Design Criticism and Writing. Students can choose to follow one of these pathways from their sophomore through senior year, or they can use them to create their own study program.
Parsons' location in New York City enables the school to benefit from the resources of a major world city at every level of the curriculum. Classes draw on the resources of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Cooper Hewitt Museum, as well as the many smaller specialized museums and hundreds of art galleries that make New York City a center of the international art and design world.
