Parsons will formally launch a new Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) undergraduate major called Design History and Practice next semester, Fall 2020. The new major connects the dots between a liberal arts-based design theory course with a history concentration to hands-on studio production, according to founding director and Assistant Professor of Visual Culture, Margot Bouman.
“I teach in The School of Art and Design History and Theory, and this school is part of Parsons,” Bouman said. “We’ve been offering liberal arts courses in art history, design history and museum studies and so on for a long time, so we thought this seemed like a natural place to start thinking about a degree that was interdisciplinary. Not necessarily in its subject matter, but in the way that it approaches that subject matter.”
Students in the Design History and Practice major will still need to meet first-year course requirements, such as Sustainable Systems and Objects as History, but the program will introduce several new courses exclusive to the major. This includes the new Making + Meaning curriculum, emphasizing “design activism.” Students will take one Making + Meaning course each year. These core classes start with a sophomore level proseminar, a lecture course, and end with a Making + Meaning senior capstone.
The Design History and Practice major is the first of its kind at Parsons. It is the first Parsons undergraduate major emphasizing the importance and value of art and design history through liberal arts courses, while also aiming to teach necessary skills for artistic project production.
“I just realized that there’s no real requirement for most of our majors here at Parsons to study anything other than like one history course.I thought there was a real lack in the curriculum, because even in modern design history we only were able to cover Western, like, capitalist design.“
Meagan Montgomery
“When I was in Communication Design I was taking [the History of Design Lecture] and I had a professor named Sarah Lichtman as my lecturer,” said Meagan Montgomery, a second-year Parsons student who switched to the Design History and Practice major this year during its soft-launch, unofficial opening. “I was really fascinated by her course and realized how much I take from history and just being inspired by the past to inform what I’m doing in the present.”
Through the new major, Montgomery is concentrating on curatorial studies.
“I just realized that there’s no real requirement for most of our majors here at Parsons to study anything other than like one history course,” Montgomery said. “I thought there was a real lack in the curriculum, because even in modern design history we only were able to cover Western, like, capitalist design.”
While Parsons offers a minor called Art and Design History, the new major allows students to create a more concentrated, self-designed path.
“The minor doesn’t offer those kinds of concentrations,” Bouman said. “You take a series of courses within art history, design history, but you don’t have that more expensive trip into practice and being mindful or thinking about those kinds of practices that the meaning of seminars offer.”
Prospective students will be able to apply for the Design History and Practice BFA for this Fall, when the major will be officially launching. There will be a symposium to celebrate the launch of the major in the fall.