Art History is a discipline which investigates the historical evolution of visual arts such as painting, sculpture, architecture, printmaking and photography.

Art historians deal with and are professionals of the determination, description, classification, interpretation of works of art and its passing into history. Art historians endeavour to understand what artists express in their work and what viewers perceive. Questions and problematics on how a work of art reflects the world of its time, how its world of origin affected that work of art, patrons of art, merchants of art, the transformation of the materials and techniques of art, the phenomena of collection, the cultural and art policies of the consumers/viewers, art institutions and state, relationships between art-politics are also subject matters of art historians. Helping institutions and associations and guiding them regarding the preservation of the movable and immovable cultural properties and their transfer to future generations, keeping them restored in their original state, are among fundamental missions of art historians.

Found in 2011 within Karadeniz Technical University?s Faculty of Letters, Department of History of Art consists of three departments, namely Turkish-Islamic Art; Byzantine Art; Western Art and Contemporary Art.

Education has not yet begun in the Department, which is in its foundation phase, while the process of recruiting qualified staff is still in progress.

Aims

The fundamental aims of the History of Art Department are,

Helping students become skilful at acquiring the abilities of associating their national identities with global values, thinking differently, looking beyond surfaces and overt images, visual analysis and critical reading, thinking scientifically and create solutions,

Upbringing art historians with the ability of constantly improving themselves and who are conscious about recognition, preservation and handing down to the next generations of cultural and art assets,

Reaching the level of similar departments at national and international level, graduating students while generating information at international level,

Becoming effective at a national and an international level especially in History of Art, as well as other social science branches, in which graduate and undergraduate programs adopt scientific approaches at universal quality.