Profile of art history at the University of Vienna

The discipline of art history, as understood by the Department of History of Art at the University of Vienna, looks at visual arts inside and outside of Europe since late antiquity from a historical perspective.

In addition to traditional art forms such as architecture, painting, graphic arts, sculpture and applied arts, visual arts have come to also include new visual media, everyday art, design and cross-media art forms.

This profile is backed by the professorships at the Department of History of Art in Vienna: Late Antiquity and Byzantine Art History (Manuela Studer-Karlen) – Middle Ages (Assaf Pinkus) – Renaissance and Cognitive Research in Art History (Raphael Rosenberg) – Baroque (Sebastian Schütze, currently Rector of the University of Vienna, Substitute: Lucia Simonato) – Modern Art (Sebastian Egenhofer) – Contemporary Art (Friederike Sigler) – East Asian Art History (Lukas Nickel) – Islamic Art History (Markus Ritter).

These main fields are broadened and deepened by Assistant Professor Sandra Hindriks (Northern Renaissance) and Associate Professor Wolfram Pichler (Image Theory, Modern Art).

The teaching program is complemented by the professorship for Cultural Heritage Studies, held by Noémie Étienne, which is based at the Faculty Center for Transdisciplinary Historical and Cultural Studies.