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THE HISTORY OF ART HISTORY AT HUNTER COLLEGE
Hunter College was founded in 1870 in order to provide a liberal education to
young women who wished to become teachers. It was first known as the
Normal College of the City of New York, "normal" as in école normale, a school
for the training of teachers. The founding of the College was part of a master
plan for free higher education for all the citizens of New York City. This system
eventually became the largest municipal system of higher education in the
United States. It led to the establishment, in 1961, of the City University of New
York, of which Hunter College was a founding member.
The Normal College was intended to provide specialized teacher training but it
gradually developed and expanded its curriculum until it became a fully
accredited liberal arts college for women. In 1914, its name was changed to
Hunter College of the City of New York to honor Thomas Hunter, its first
president. Male students were admitted to the previously exclusively female
student body beginning in 1964, but its importance to the education of women
accounted for its national reputation. By 1970 more American women who had
earned Ph.D.'s had received their undergraduate education at Hunter College
than at any other institution in the United States. It is no exaggeration to say that
in its first century of existence no college in the United States contributed more to
the education of women than Hunter College.
As the College grew the curriculum expanded to include new disciplines. The
Art Department had been a part of the curriculum since the early 1900s. The
early part of the century saw the development of art history as a part of the
Liberal Arts in American higher education and in the 1930s Hunter began to
offer courses in art history taught by its studio faculty. In 1958 a new chairman
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of the Art Department was elected, the art critic Eugene Goossen, and he
elevated the level of professionalism in the discipline by bringing into the faculty
an array of art historians and critics. Among Goossen’s hires in art history were
William Rubin, later Director of the Museum of Modern Art, Leo Steinberg and
Janet Cox-Rearick.
Within the decade of the 60s the department offerings expanded to a full range of
subject areas in the History of Art: Ancient, Medieval, Islam, Renaissance,
Baroque, Nineteenth Century, and the Modern Period. The department’s
continuing commitment to excellence is reflected in its professors throughout its
history: Rosalind Krauss, Linda Nochlin, Wayne Dynes, and William Agee,
among many others, have been members of the faculty at Hunter. It continues
to offer its undergraduate and graduate students a full range of courses in the
Western tradition, and now is embarking on a campaign to expand these areas
and to include non-Western faculty as well.