PhD in Art History - East Asian Art in Toronto Canada | University of Toronto

The MA and PhD programs focus on developing research, writing, and teaching skills for careers in academia, museum curation, art advisory, cultural heritage initiatives, arts journalism, or secondary education. Faculty guide students specializing in Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque, Asian, African, Architectural, and Modern/Contemporary Art studies.
Graduate students can leverage departmental partnerships with the Centre for Medieval Studies, Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, Book History and Print Culture program, and Mediterranean Archaeology Collaborative Specialization. Toronto's dynamic arts community becomes accessible through resources and faculty connections at the Royal Ontario Museum, University Art Centre, Gardiner Museum, and Art Gallery of Ontario. The university boasts exceptional art history research libraries, featuring the Department of Art History's collection of 40,000+ exhibition catalogs, the Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library, and Robarts Research Library - one of Canada's premier academic libraries. The PhD curriculum equips students for university teaching, museum careers, and research roles. As the third North American institution (after Princeton and Columbia) to teach East Asian art history, the University of Toronto aimed to create a Chinese Art Chair in 1933, though political circumstances in China delayed this vision. Despite this, the university pioneered East Asian art education, granting its first PhD in this discipline in 1943. Esteemed scholars like Bishop William White, Professor John C. Ferguson, Mark Gayn, and Professor David Waterhouse contributed to building the university's comprehensive East Asian art history library resources.