I've always liked history classes so I found the class to be interesting, but I do know that a lot of students found it to be very boring. Where this class turns out to be difficult is that your grade is almost entirely based on papers analyzing art pieces, this should be fine but they actually graded very harshly, at least my TA did. I got stuck with this class freshman fall quarter because all the other AGEs were full, so my advice is if you don't absolutely have to take this class then don't. The professor was very nice and I do feel that I learned quite a bit, but not worth it for that harsh grading.

Save yourself a quarter of agony and just take musicology or something.

The exams (midterm and final) is what will destroy your grade. Professor Wilson was a great lecturer and very passionate about what she teaches. I wish the grading for this class was structured differently. Like everyone said, this is not an easy GE.

If you're already familiar with analyzing art or have some historical knowledge about the Renaissance era, the class will be much less challenging. But even without prior knowledge, if you attend (and take notes on) every lecture, participate in discussions, and do all the reading, you can do well. That said, the lectures are a little dry, and I personally skipped a few towards the end since I knew I can access the recordings later.

The class was graded on two comparison essays, a research project, and a final, which is another two comparison essays. It may sound like a light workload, but this meant I barely had any opportunities to learn from practice, so make sure to go to TA office hours to maximize your opportunities for feedback. The final project prompt was worded very vaguely - Prof. Wilson had to send 3 clarification emails and also clarify the requirements multiple times in lecture. No rubric was given, either.

All things considered, I did enjoy the course content. I've never given much thought to art before, so it was very eye-opening to see how other people synthesized the social, political, and even personal contexts around a work of art and produce unique and meaningful interpretations.

I really loved this class!!! However, I don't think I would have liked it nearly as much if I took the class in person.

Professor Wilson held live lectures over zoom that I thought were very very interesting. Each week we cover a different theme in art such as gender or power. Lectures were always insightful and I personally found them very interesting.

I also loved my TA, Catherine. Discussions were made optional for fall 2021 quarter but I went every week because my TA made the discussions so engaging.

We have three essays to write where we compare 2 different art works. These were easy and fun but ONLY because we did not have to do them in person. In the essay you are required to fully identify the two art pieces you are comparing and give a full in-depth analysis of them. We are not told what 2 pieces we have to compare before the paper, so this would be extremely difficult if the papers were in-class papers because that means you would have to memorize everything about every art piece we discussed in class. I was lucky enough to not have the papers be in-class essays so I was able to use my notes and refer to the recorded lectures to write them. I got As on all my papers because of this.

I personally really enjoyed this class but also I took AP art history in high school so I had a little bit of background info. I think that if I've never taken an art history class I would definitely be very confused because a lot of times the professor and even the TAs assume we know a lot of art history terminology and stuff like that.

If you are a STEM major looking for an art course to satisfy your GEs, DO NOT take this class. This class is not supposed to require prior experience, which was exactly my situation, but it put me behind everyone else in the class by so much. Perhaps its just the logical STEM major in me, but this class made no sense to me and was extremely frustrating all quarter long. I do think Professor Wilson is kind and patient and wants the best for her students, but personally, I found her lectures to be contradictory and her tests to be insane: about 30 minutes to write an essay that should be beautiful & fully cohesive. I actually think I am a pretty good writer, just unfamiliar with writing about the material, and I struggled a lot, so if you are not a good writer, and if you don't like "interpreting" and "exploring" and "analyzing" art, maybe do yourself a favor and look for other classes.

But if you are a North Campus student, this might be a great class for you! The instructors I encountered were all pretty friendly, so you might find this class fantastic. I took this class with North Campus friends and they seemed to really enjoy it.

The class is way more tougher than needed for a freshman GE class. Your grade is dependent on both the midterm and the final which both require hardcore memorization on multiple objects. Both of them include two slide comparisons to be done in 30 minutes each; the works to be compared are taken from a list of about 30 art pieces, of which you need to know the medium, original location, date (to 20 years), title, and artist. Comparisons must be done by comparing the visual elements and linking them with the historical context of both paintings. The finals include 2 free-response essays, forcing you to write 4 essays in the span of 2 hours on the overarching topics of the class. You are given just the 5 topics; the questions are omitted so there's the possibility of arguing wrong for the topics. Discussion section was enjoyable though; Rafael was really engaging and helpful throughout the entire quarter, and his humor helped make the class a less of a disaster.

Wilson is unyielding in her opinions of art and architecture (admittedly I am too and do not fault her for this), so it's difficult to formulate your own interpretations of works. She is more interested in features of architecture than paintings or sculpture. The lectures are a bit tiresome, but that could be because they're in a dark lecture hall. The readings are honestly more interesting than lectures because they introduced me to a variety of perspectives on European art. The TAs were wonderful! Very helpful and nice. Though this is a heavy work load, I enjoyed the class.

This review is for AH 121D. Her voice and wordiness seem to bore almost everyone in class because, as someone has stated, she often tries too hard to look for words, hence failing to sound eloquent. Her grading was harsh, and she did not offer feedback as to why you got the grade. The instructions for the assignments were vague, and then, students submitted something she was not expecting, and they received bad grades. She does not even attempt to remember the names of their students, which I felt was alienating. Overall, I would recommend staying away from her classes. Other professors in the art history department care more about their students and have far more enriching courses that you will look forward to attending. Her classes left me with a bad experience in both Renaissance and Baroque art.

I love art and was really excited to take an Art History class at UCLA -- however, I was extremely disappointed at how difficult and arbitrary the grading is. The TAs purposely made the class way harder than it needed to be. I got a B+ on my paper and then later saw it posted on the examples of an A paper, which basically means the best grade you could get on that assignment was a B+. Professor Wilson is clearly very knowledgeable, but her style of lecturing tends to go on tangents and makes it difficult to discern what information is important to know for the exams. If you're looking for an easy GE, this is not the class for you.