Bronwen Wilson
Department of Art History
AD
2.9
Overall Rating
Based on 39 Users
Easiness 2.4 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 3.2 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 2.9 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 3.2 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

TOP TAGS

  • Uses Slides
  • Tolerates Tardiness
  • Appropriately Priced Materials
  • Tough Tests
GRADE DISTRIBUTIONS
28.7%
23.9%
19.1%
14.3%
9.6%
4.8%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

38.2%
31.8%
25.4%
19.1%
12.7%
6.4%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

37.2%
31.0%
24.8%
18.6%
12.4%
6.2%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

33.5%
27.9%
22.3%
16.7%
11.2%
5.6%
0.0%
A+
A
A-
B+
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
D
D-
F

Grade distributions are collected using data from the UCLA Registrar’s Office.

ENROLLMENT DISTRIBUTIONS
Clear marks

Sorry, no enrollment data is available.

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Reviews (34)

3 of 4
3 of 4
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Quarter: Fall 2019
Grade: A-
Dec. 22, 2019

I agree with some of the other reviewers here when they say that Art His 22 with Wilson is a pretty difficult class overall. However, I think she's a great lecturer who is clearly very knowledgeable and passionate about the subject.
The workload isn't unmanageable overall, with only a single paper due in the first half of the quarter as well as a page of notes to be turned into section each week based on the readings she posts on CCLE. What really does make this class tough though are the exams. The Midterm consists of 2 comparison essays for which you have to memorize a long list of paintings, including the name of the painting, the artist, the context, time period, medium, etc. and write 2 essays about the paintings she displays. The Final is even tougher, including 2 comparison essays as well as 2 other essays, all to be written within a little over 2 hours. The list she gives for the final has 35 paintings on it, all of which need to be studied and memorized, so it can be pretty difficult to prepare for.
The lectures are really interesting though, and I felt as though Professor Wilson was able to get through a huge amount of varying works throughout the 10 weeks. If you have any interest at all in art and don't mind taking a difficult and challenging GE, I would highly recommend taking this class. Just be mindful of the difficult exams, and the fact that the lectures aren't podcasted, so to be successful in the class, you must show up to the lectures or at the very least get notes from someone present.

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Quarter: Fall 2019
Grade: N/A
Nov. 14, 2019

Professor Wilson is passionate about her teaching. She speaks clearly and her lectures are somewhat interesting regardless if you like art history or not. Attendance in lecture isn't necessary but to have a better understanding for the Midterm and Final, you should definitely go. Honestly, if you put in the effort, this class should be a breeze. My advice: attend lectures, take a good amount of notes, participate in discussion w/ the one paper of notes, and study just a bit. Pretty light. Good luck.

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Quarter: Fall 2021
Grade: A+
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Jan. 20, 2022

First, I would NOT recommend this class to any STEM majors who are entirely unfamiliar with art history. It's an art history class! And if you don't have a background in it, you will struggle.
That being said, I loved this class as an art history major. Wilson is a great teacher and explains everything very well. The essays were challenging, but they forced me to learn a lot and grow in my writing. The research essay was also tricky, yet I enjoyed it a lot because we could pick what we wrote about. Please make sure you choose something you're REALLY interested in because you will be spending a long time with it.
Overall, this is a great lower-division class for art, art history, or history majors. It's immensely interesting and you will learn a lot!

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Quarter: Fall 2021
Grade: A-
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Jan. 7, 2022

This class is an extremely easy GE if you are looking for something interesting that doesn't take up too much time/effort. The content is really interesting and it gives you a new perspective/some extra background to evaluate artwork in the future. There wasn't a single assignment until about week 4 other than weekly reading (which, in my opinion, isn't necessary because I rarely read them and was fine). There is an essay around week 4, essay around week 6, a research project(fancy essay) starting around week 6, and then two essays for the final in week 10. Your TA grades all of your essays and then it is passed onto a second reader for a second-pass. My TA was super nice and was able to tell me what I could improve on which was SUPER helpful so I definitely recommend reaching out to your TAs.

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Quarter: Fall 2020
Grade: A-
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Feb. 17, 2021

Overview/Professor:
I really enjoyed the subject matter of this course. I thought Professor Wilson was very clear and extraordinarily knowledgeable.

Material:
- Her lectures are recorded/not live, and often go well over 3 hours per week. They often range between 2.5-3.5 hours of recorded material per week.
- The readings are usually 15-40 pages per week (including both required and recommended readings).
- She sometimes includes recommended 10ish minute videos per week as well.
- She holds optional 75 min review sessions once a week.

Discussion Sections:
- For discussion section, it is essentially a review and a deeper dive into the required reading for the week.
- A 1 -1.5 page summary of the reading is due each week at the beginning of section.

Assignments:
- Most of the 'take home exams' are two essays. These slide comparisons each compare and contrast 2 pieces of art/architecture. There are two of these in the quarter, kind of like a midterm/final.
- There is also a visual analysis assignment where you simply describe a piece of art, and it is more like one single essay.

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Quarter: Fall 2020
Grade: A-
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Jan. 13, 2021

While Professor Wilson seems like a nice person, she is not a great GE professor. I took this class as a GE, as I’m sure many people did, but she acted as though we all had a background in Art History. There were a lot of readings, but they were interesting to me. The midterm essay was graded a little harshly, but that was more on my TA than Prof Wilson. By the time the final essay rolls around, though, you should figure out what you’re doing. In terms of the lectures, they’re recorded which is nice, but there’s a lot of material covered throughout the quarter so I picked and chose which lectures were actually necessary to watch. Overall, I wouldn’t take it again, but it wasn’t an awful class.

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Quarter: Fall 2020
Grade: B+
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Jan. 6, 2021

By far, this has to be one of the worst classes I have ever taken. In the beginning, the class was super confusing bc she decided to give the T.a's leniency in deciding the format of these short responses due each week. Don't let the word "short" fool you. While yes, the responses were a total of 300 words, the readings which the responses were on were sometimes up to 50 pages total! As if that wasn't enough, the lectures, which were boring and not in the slightest useful, also had questions at the end which were part of the response. However, given that the T.a's had all the say for these, some T.a's, like mine, asked us only to focus on the readings, which meant we had to read the whole text in order to get our participation points. The readings themselves were super boring and difficult to understand --the one exception being Machiavelli's Prince--so the students who had to focus completely on them, struggled. But, this did mean that if you only had to use readings in your responses you could, and should as it as a big time saver, completely ignore the lectures which many students did.

The tests which were a midterm and final had the same structure as each other. Both were comparisons of two artworks of her choosing from the 50 or so that are the lectures. Luckily, since everything Is recorded and the fact that she gave us a week to do them, when the test comes out, you can just scroll through the lectures were she talks about the paintings and ignore everything else. I did this for both tests and got an A- on my midterm and a B+ on my final, despite her still giving out readings during test weeks, which by the way, were the longest ones in the class! Ignoring the lectures, if you are fortunate enough to get a T.a who only asks you to focus on the readings, is the best thing you could do as it just saves you so much time.

We had two other assignments due which were not as difficult as the tests. One was a visual analysis on a work. To sum up the visuals analysis, the goal is to describe a work as completely as possible using terms from the class in about 500 words. Write everything you see even if it does not seem important. The next assignment is based on the work you picked. It is a research project or "proposal" as she says. This assignment purely depends on your work and how 'famous' it is. The more well known the work you have, the easier it is for you to find your sources. The structure was a powerpoint that included a title page, a refined version of your visual analysis, three research questions, and three works similar to the one you chose.

I do not know if it was her idea or the T.a's but someone was generous enough to offer extra credit in the form of a self portrait in which you would take a photo of yourself that looks similar to the one you chose, although it only counted for about the same as one of the weekly responses.

In sum, do not take this class, especially if you just want to fulfill a G.E. this class is not worth the stress and sleep loss that comes with it. Even if you really enjoy the subject, I suggest you still try and look for something else. To those poor people who have to take it for one reason or another, I hope you get through it.

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Quarter: Fall 2020
Grade: B
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Jan. 6, 2021

When enrolling in this class I first thought it would deal with just art while providing some historical background info and that it'd be interesting and relatively easy, because after all it was an art class. Week 2 is when I realized I was going to absolutely dread and dislike this class. The readings were very dense, with the exception of maybe two or three shorter ones, and extremely boring to be honest. Lectures were just as boring and the professor's voice was very hard to listen and pay attention to. We had weekly responses to the readings and lectures due every week before your discussion, so it sucked for anyone who had to read everything early in the week. The midterm and final consisted of two essay comparisons of two separate pair of paintings, which was very annoying and hard to understand what it is they really wanted from us. We were never given examples of what was expected of us until after we had already done the assignments--which didn't make sense to me. This class became the class I absolutely dreaded and spent so much time and lost so much sleep on. I didn't learn a single thing, nor did I find any of the material covered interesting. I somehow managed a B, though I was sure I would barely pass with a C. Overall I didn't like this class at all and I don't think it was worth all the effort and time spent on it for the grade I received,

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Quarter: Fall 2020
Grade: A-
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Jan. 1, 2021

Pretty heavy weekly workload considering it's a GE, but it is possible to get by without too much trouble if you are doing the bare minimum and have decent writing skills. My TA, Tori Schmitt, was wonderful so that definitely helped.

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Quarter: Fall 2020
Grade: P
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Dec. 7, 2020

Pros:
- My TA (Kersten) was very helpful and kind, and discussion sections basically taught me everything.
- Since it's asynchronous, you can always look at lecture material for review.
- Since this was online, it was a bit easier. But I know that for in-person classes, she makes you memorize like 40 paintings.
- There were synchronous review sessions every Thursday (not recorded, though). Honestly I didn't really pay attention, but they seemed to be helpful. HOWEVER, she does assume that you attend them even though they're optional.

Cons:
- Workload is extremely excessive. The amount of reading and writing that you have to do for this class is on par or even more than Writing II classes, and this isn't a Writing II class.
- You have to submit about a page of writing for homework every week, including on weeks with essays due, which gets very difficult -- especially when both the midterm and the final are two 800-1000 word essays.
- Professor Wilson is very boring to listen to and isn't succinct whatsoever. Again, I learned everything through my TA.
- My TA graded harshly and feedback wasn't helpful whatsoever (hence why I P/NP'd).

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Quarter: Fall 2019
Grade: A-
Dec. 22, 2019

I agree with some of the other reviewers here when they say that Art His 22 with Wilson is a pretty difficult class overall. However, I think she's a great lecturer who is clearly very knowledgeable and passionate about the subject.
The workload isn't unmanageable overall, with only a single paper due in the first half of the quarter as well as a page of notes to be turned into section each week based on the readings she posts on CCLE. What really does make this class tough though are the exams. The Midterm consists of 2 comparison essays for which you have to memorize a long list of paintings, including the name of the painting, the artist, the context, time period, medium, etc. and write 2 essays about the paintings she displays. The Final is even tougher, including 2 comparison essays as well as 2 other essays, all to be written within a little over 2 hours. The list she gives for the final has 35 paintings on it, all of which need to be studied and memorized, so it can be pretty difficult to prepare for.
The lectures are really interesting though, and I felt as though Professor Wilson was able to get through a huge amount of varying works throughout the 10 weeks. If you have any interest at all in art and don't mind taking a difficult and challenging GE, I would highly recommend taking this class. Just be mindful of the difficult exams, and the fact that the lectures aren't podcasted, so to be successful in the class, you must show up to the lectures or at the very least get notes from someone present.

Helpful?

2 1 Please log in to provide feedback.
Quarter: Fall 2019
Grade: N/A
Nov. 14, 2019

Professor Wilson is passionate about her teaching. She speaks clearly and her lectures are somewhat interesting regardless if you like art history or not. Attendance in lecture isn't necessary but to have a better understanding for the Midterm and Final, you should definitely go. Honestly, if you put in the effort, this class should be a breeze. My advice: attend lectures, take a good amount of notes, participate in discussion w/ the one paper of notes, and study just a bit. Pretty light. Good luck.

Helpful?

1 3 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2021
Grade: A+
Jan. 20, 2022

First, I would NOT recommend this class to any STEM majors who are entirely unfamiliar with art history. It's an art history class! And if you don't have a background in it, you will struggle.
That being said, I loved this class as an art history major. Wilson is a great teacher and explains everything very well. The essays were challenging, but they forced me to learn a lot and grow in my writing. The research essay was also tricky, yet I enjoyed it a lot because we could pick what we wrote about. Please make sure you choose something you're REALLY interested in because you will be spending a long time with it.
Overall, this is a great lower-division class for art, art history, or history majors. It's immensely interesting and you will learn a lot!

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0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Fall 2021
Grade: A-
Jan. 7, 2022

This class is an extremely easy GE if you are looking for something interesting that doesn't take up too much time/effort. The content is really interesting and it gives you a new perspective/some extra background to evaluate artwork in the future. There wasn't a single assignment until about week 4 other than weekly reading (which, in my opinion, isn't necessary because I rarely read them and was fine). There is an essay around week 4, essay around week 6, a research project(fancy essay) starting around week 6, and then two essays for the final in week 10. Your TA grades all of your essays and then it is passed onto a second reader for a second-pass. My TA was super nice and was able to tell me what I could improve on which was SUPER helpful so I definitely recommend reaching out to your TAs.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Fall 2020
Grade: A-
Feb. 17, 2021

Overview/Professor:
I really enjoyed the subject matter of this course. I thought Professor Wilson was very clear and extraordinarily knowledgeable.

Material:
- Her lectures are recorded/not live, and often go well over 3 hours per week. They often range between 2.5-3.5 hours of recorded material per week.
- The readings are usually 15-40 pages per week (including both required and recommended readings).
- She sometimes includes recommended 10ish minute videos per week as well.
- She holds optional 75 min review sessions once a week.

Discussion Sections:
- For discussion section, it is essentially a review and a deeper dive into the required reading for the week.
- A 1 -1.5 page summary of the reading is due each week at the beginning of section.

Assignments:
- Most of the 'take home exams' are two essays. These slide comparisons each compare and contrast 2 pieces of art/architecture. There are two of these in the quarter, kind of like a midterm/final.
- There is also a visual analysis assignment where you simply describe a piece of art, and it is more like one single essay.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Fall 2020
Grade: A-
Jan. 13, 2021

While Professor Wilson seems like a nice person, she is not a great GE professor. I took this class as a GE, as I’m sure many people did, but she acted as though we all had a background in Art History. There were a lot of readings, but they were interesting to me. The midterm essay was graded a little harshly, but that was more on my TA than Prof Wilson. By the time the final essay rolls around, though, you should figure out what you’re doing. In terms of the lectures, they’re recorded which is nice, but there’s a lot of material covered throughout the quarter so I picked and chose which lectures were actually necessary to watch. Overall, I wouldn’t take it again, but it wasn’t an awful class.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Fall 2020
Grade: B+
Jan. 6, 2021

By far, this has to be one of the worst classes I have ever taken. In the beginning, the class was super confusing bc she decided to give the T.a's leniency in deciding the format of these short responses due each week. Don't let the word "short" fool you. While yes, the responses were a total of 300 words, the readings which the responses were on were sometimes up to 50 pages total! As if that wasn't enough, the lectures, which were boring and not in the slightest useful, also had questions at the end which were part of the response. However, given that the T.a's had all the say for these, some T.a's, like mine, asked us only to focus on the readings, which meant we had to read the whole text in order to get our participation points. The readings themselves were super boring and difficult to understand --the one exception being Machiavelli's Prince--so the students who had to focus completely on them, struggled. But, this did mean that if you only had to use readings in your responses you could, and should as it as a big time saver, completely ignore the lectures which many students did.

The tests which were a midterm and final had the same structure as each other. Both were comparisons of two artworks of her choosing from the 50 or so that are the lectures. Luckily, since everything Is recorded and the fact that she gave us a week to do them, when the test comes out, you can just scroll through the lectures were she talks about the paintings and ignore everything else. I did this for both tests and got an A- on my midterm and a B+ on my final, despite her still giving out readings during test weeks, which by the way, were the longest ones in the class! Ignoring the lectures, if you are fortunate enough to get a T.a who only asks you to focus on the readings, is the best thing you could do as it just saves you so much time.

We had two other assignments due which were not as difficult as the tests. One was a visual analysis on a work. To sum up the visuals analysis, the goal is to describe a work as completely as possible using terms from the class in about 500 words. Write everything you see even if it does not seem important. The next assignment is based on the work you picked. It is a research project or "proposal" as she says. This assignment purely depends on your work and how 'famous' it is. The more well known the work you have, the easier it is for you to find your sources. The structure was a powerpoint that included a title page, a refined version of your visual analysis, three research questions, and three works similar to the one you chose.

I do not know if it was her idea or the T.a's but someone was generous enough to offer extra credit in the form of a self portrait in which you would take a photo of yourself that looks similar to the one you chose, although it only counted for about the same as one of the weekly responses.

In sum, do not take this class, especially if you just want to fulfill a G.E. this class is not worth the stress and sleep loss that comes with it. Even if you really enjoy the subject, I suggest you still try and look for something else. To those poor people who have to take it for one reason or another, I hope you get through it.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Quarter: Fall 2020
Grade: B
Jan. 6, 2021

When enrolling in this class I first thought it would deal with just art while providing some historical background info and that it'd be interesting and relatively easy, because after all it was an art class. Week 2 is when I realized I was going to absolutely dread and dislike this class. The readings were very dense, with the exception of maybe two or three shorter ones, and extremely boring to be honest. Lectures were just as boring and the professor's voice was very hard to listen and pay attention to. We had weekly responses to the readings and lectures due every week before your discussion, so it sucked for anyone who had to read everything early in the week. The midterm and final consisted of two essay comparisons of two separate pair of paintings, which was very annoying and hard to understand what it is they really wanted from us. We were never given examples of what was expected of us until after we had already done the assignments--which didn't make sense to me. This class became the class I absolutely dreaded and spent so much time and lost so much sleep on. I didn't learn a single thing, nor did I find any of the material covered interesting. I somehow managed a B, though I was sure I would barely pass with a C. Overall I didn't like this class at all and I don't think it was worth all the effort and time spent on it for the grade I received,

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2020
Grade: A-
Jan. 1, 2021

Pretty heavy weekly workload considering it's a GE, but it is possible to get by without too much trouble if you are doing the bare minimum and have decent writing skills. My TA, Tori Schmitt, was wonderful so that definitely helped.

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
COVID-19 This review was submitted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your experience may vary.
Verified Reviewer This user is a verified UCLA student/alum.
Quarter: Fall 2020
Grade: P
Dec. 7, 2020

Pros:
- My TA (Kersten) was very helpful and kind, and discussion sections basically taught me everything.
- Since it's asynchronous, you can always look at lecture material for review.
- Since this was online, it was a bit easier. But I know that for in-person classes, she makes you memorize like 40 paintings.
- There were synchronous review sessions every Thursday (not recorded, though). Honestly I didn't really pay attention, but they seemed to be helpful. HOWEVER, she does assume that you attend them even though they're optional.

Cons:
- Workload is extremely excessive. The amount of reading and writing that you have to do for this class is on par or even more than Writing II classes, and this isn't a Writing II class.
- You have to submit about a page of writing for homework every week, including on weeks with essays due, which gets very difficult -- especially when both the midterm and the final are two 800-1000 word essays.
- Professor Wilson is very boring to listen to and isn't succinct whatsoever. Again, I learned everything through my TA.
- My TA graded harshly and feedback wasn't helpful whatsoever (hence why I P/NP'd).

Helpful?

0 0 Please log in to provide feedback.
3 of 4
2.9
Overall Rating
Based on 39 Users
Easiness 2.4 / 5 How easy the class is, 1 being extremely difficult and 5 being easy peasy.
Clarity 3.2 / 5 How clear the class is, 1 being extremely unclear and 5 being very clear.
Workload 2.9 / 5 How much workload the class is, 1 being extremely heavy and 5 being extremely light.
Helpfulness 3.2 / 5 How helpful the class is, 1 being not helpful at all and 5 being extremely helpful.

TOP TAGS

  • Uses Slides
    (27)
  • Tolerates Tardiness
    (16)
  • Appropriately Priced Materials
    (13)
  • Tough Tests
    (17)
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