The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Art History Department is celebrating its 100th anniversary this month, with an official centennial celebration Sept. 24-26 and further events planned throughout the semester, including lectures and panels with art history professionals.
There will be an open house at the Chazen Museum of Art led by curators, faculty and alumni on Sept. 25.
UW-Madison’s art history department is unique because it is one of the only freestanding art history departments in the country. At other universities, art history programs are often subsections of history or art departments. UW-Madison’s program is also one of the oldest.
“It was really one man back in 1925, Oskar F. Hagen, who was a German-educated art historian [and professor]. He wanted to start [the program] and started it. [It was] big in the sense that he was a one-person show originally,” Anna Andrzejewski, art history professor and the department’s centennial chair, told The Daily Cardinal.
From there, the program continued to expand.
Hagen hired some former students to teach alongside him. This included James Watrous, who went on to organize the Elvehjem Art Center, now known as the Chazen Museum of Art.
Prior to this, “art was all over the place,” Andrzejewski said. “It was in the lobbies of buildings. It was in professors' offices.”
When the department was founded, it was envisioned to be a fine arts headquarters for the university and wider region.
That mission can be seen today in the success of the department’s alumni.
“What's really amazing about our achievements is that we turn out students at all levels. In the art history field, we've had many become curators at museums,” said Andrzejewski.
Two recent examples of the department’s impact are Drew Sawyer and Marcela Guerrero, UW-Madison alumni who have been named lead curators of the 2026 Whitney Biennial.
“The coursework I took at Madison stuck with me throughout my subsequent graduate work and really formed the way I continue to think as a curator and a scholar,” Sawyer said.
