Readings were pretty useless and I wasted a lot of time trying to slog through those only to give up halfway through the quarter. Lectures were pretty boring and Professor Wilson would bring up a lot of interesting points about an art piece and then just never mention/expand upon those points again. Exams felt like AP Lit or Lang tests (a part of my life I would much rather forget) because of all the on-demand essays. I was really excited for this class at the beginning of the quarter because I like art history, but by the end it was just painful.

I wouldn't recommend this class for an easy GE, and if you don't like art history, do not take this class. You need to go to lecture in order to do well on exams. I didn't think lecture was too bad, but I was also slightly interested in the content, and I think if I didn't like it I would not be able to sit through class. You don't really need to do the reading, I never did it and just went to lecture which covered a lot of the exam material, but it also goes over material from lecture. The midterm and final exams were also very difficult and a TON of writing and memorization. I think Prof. Bronwen means well and wants to help out her students, but this class is mainly designed only for art history people.

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.

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.

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.

Do not take this class if you are a south campus major looking for an easy GE. The material was uninteresting to me and the professor's lectures are extremely boring. You need to go to class because it is not bruincasted and the paintings she talks about are on the exam. It is a shitload of memorization for the midterm and final, and they are graded pretty harsh. The final is FOUR ESSAYS!!!!! There was one short paper that seemed relatively easy but it is graded very harshly. Also very TA dependent, mine was not helpful at all and graded the paper very harsh.

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.

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.

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

I think most of the reviews from 2019 fall are kind of biased.
Yes, this class has a heavy workload.
Yes, the exams require you to know your materials.
However, I don't think we should expect an easy class just because it's a GE. What's the use of an easy class anyway? For me, I often learn the most from classes that are the most challenging. The class is difficult but prof. Wilson is so willing to help you. She answers questions in such an engaging way that makes me think a lot more about my original question. She might be going a bit fast in lectures sometimes but she explains things clearly whenever I ask her to go back on a topic I didn't understand. I got a B for my visual analysis and I was very frustrated, but she walked me through my paper and pointed out all the things I need to work on. Honestly, she's like one of the best professors I've had. I had almost no interest in Renaissance art but she made it very interesting.