AP Art History Syllabus
Riggs 2013-14
Course Description: This course is intended to prepare students to perform successfully on the AP Art History Exam. It is therefore designed with those parameters on periods, topics, artists and cultures that are represented on the tests and types of questions that have historically been presented there.
The course will look chronologically at the development of art from prehistory to the 21 st
Century while making brief and timely excursions out of the European Traditional and into other cultures such as the African, Mezzo-American and Eastern traditions.
Furthermore, the course is designed to study not only the art itself, but how that art fits into both the culture and time that it was created in and how one time/culture connects and/or contrasts to another time/culture.
First Quarter:
Intro, A WORLD OF IMAGES: looking at Art, vocabulary and
concepts, Pre-history, Mesopotamian Basin, Egyptian
Weeks 1-9
1-2 Introduction, Vocabulary and Concepts.
3. Paleolithic, Neolithic, Exam I
4-5 Mesopotamian Basin: Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian
6-7 Egyptian
8-Writing about Art Project
9- Review and Exam
Second Quarter:
CREATING THE MEASURE : Ancient Aegean/Greek/ Roman, plus Byzantine,
Early Christian and Romanesque.
1-2 Aegean Cultures: Cycladic, Mycenaean, Minoan
3-7 The Classical Pantheon: Greek: Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic (Exam I) AND
Etruscan, Roman Republic, Early and Late Empire.
8 – Writing About Art Project and Exam
9- Byzantine, Early Christian , Romanesque and a step into the Islamic

Third Quarter:
REACHING UPWARD AND OUTWARD: Medieval, Gothic, Renaissance,
Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassicism.
Weeks 19-27
1-2 Medieval, Gothic and the Gothic Cathedral
3 - Setting the Stage for the Renaissance
4.- Early Renaissance
5- High Renaissance and Exam I
6- Mannerism and the Later 16 th
Century
7- Baroque and Rococo
8- Neoclassicism
9- Review, Writing About Art Project and Exam.
Fourth Quarter:
THE GATES SWING OPEN- Realism, Impressionism, Fauves, Post
Impressionism, 19 th
and 20 th
Century, 20 th
Century Architecture, Modern Movements etc.
Weeks 28-36
1.
19 th
Century Realism
2.
19 th Century Impressionism
3.
Post Impressionism and End of 19 th
Century
4.
Japanese and other Asian Art -Exam I
5.
20 th Century
6.
20 th
Century Architecture
7.
Modern Movements and a look into African and Mezo-America
8.
Synthesis, Exam prep, AP Exam
9.
Wrap up Final Exam and Writing about Art Project.
Required Text:
Gardner’s Art Through the Ages...A global perspective

Supplemental Materials:
Barnet, Sylvan, A short Guide to Writing about Art. Harper Collins
Tucker, Amy, Visual Literacy: Writing about Art
Slides
Video’s as available on specific periods, movements and/or artists
Student Evaluation
Each quarter’s grade will be composed of 2 exams (50%), one Writing about Art
Project (30%), and several quizzes (20%).
Writing about Art Projects:
These projects are to be selected by the students with Instructor approval and are to cross the boundaries of at least two periods, cultures (or two various art forms of a particular period) in order to demonstrate knowledge of the art, how it relates to it’s own society and how it compares to another, time, culture, or medium.