As the Tufts University department at the Museum School, Visual and Critical Studies is an interdisciplinary area with a strong commitment to offering academic courses that engage artists in both contemporary and historical discourses of visual culture. The faculty of art historians who teach in this department situate their subject expertise within critical discussions that inform how we come to understand and analyze a diverse body of cultural objects.  The department also encompasses the English Program, with English faculty that includes practicing literary scholars and creative writers.

Appealing to the specific interests and investments of Museum School students in the complexities of visuality and language, the faculty offer courses that consider art-making as productive of identities and institutions, both within particular cultural and geopolitical spheres (such as Post-War Europe, the Northern Renaissance, Pre-Columbian Americas, or early China) and as the genealogies of media and process, such as film, photography, sculpture, and text-based arts.

Drawing upon the resources of both the Museum School and Tufts, our department offers students the opportunity to engage in critical thinking and writing about the historical and contemporary issues that are decisive to all forms of visual practice.