Advanced Placement (AP) Art History (also known as AP Art, or APAH) is an

Advanced Placement Advanced Placement (AP) is a program in the United States and Canada created by the College Board which offers college-level curricula and examinations to high school students. American colleges and universities may grant placement and course ...

art history course and exam offered by the

College Board The College Board is an American nonprofit organization that was formed in December 1899 as the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) to expand access to higher education. While the College Board is not an association of colleges, it runs a ...

. AP Art History is designed to allow students to examine major forms of artistic expression relevant to a variety of cultures evident in a wide variety of periods from present times into the past. Students acquire an ability to examine works of art critically, with intelligence and sensitivity, and to articulate their thoughts and experiences. The course content covers

prehistoric Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...

, Mediterranean,

European European, or Europeans, or Europeneans, may refer to: In general * ''European'', an adjective referring to something of, from, or related to Europe ** Ethnic groups in Europe ** Demographics of Europe ** European cuisine, the cuisines of Europe ...

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

, Native American,

African African or Africans may refer to: * Anything from or pertaining to the continent of Africa: ** People who are native to Africa, descendants of natives of Africa, or individuals who trace their ancestry to indigenous inhabitants of Africa *** Ethn ...

, Asian, Pacific, and Contemporary art and architecture.

Course

The course is designed to teach the following art historical skills: *Visual Analysis *Contextual Analysis *Comparisons of Works of Art *Artistic Traditions *Visual Analysis of Unknown Works *Attribution of Unknown Works *Art Historical Interpretations *Argumentation The course is also built on five core "Big Ideas": *Culture *Interactions with Other Cultures *Theories and Interpretations *Materials, Processes, and Techniques *Purpose and Audience Starting in the 2015–2016 school year,

has introduced a new curriculum and exam for students to apply art historical skills to questions.

Exam

Score distribution

The multiple choice section of the exam is worth 50% of a student's score and the free-response is worth 50%. Each correctly answered multiple choice question is worth one point. Wrong and omitted questions do not affect the raw score. For the free-response section, the four short essays are each graded on a scale of 0 to 5 and the two long essays are each graded on a scale of 0 to 7.

Works studied

The current curriculum, which began in 2015, focuses on 250 works of art and architecture across 10 units, beginning with prehistoric art and ending with contemporary art.https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/ap/ap-art-history-course-and-exam-description.pdf Global Prehistory (30,000 - 500 BCE) * Apollo 11 stone * Great Hall of the Bulls * Camelid sacrum in the shape of a canine * Running horned woman * Beaker with ibex motifs * Anthropomorphic stele * Jade cong *

Stonehenge Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around high, wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connectin ...

* The Ambum stone * Tlatilco female figurine * Terra cotta fragment Ancient Mediterranean (3500 BCE - 300 CE) * White Temple and its ziggurat * Palette of King Narmer * Statues of votive figures, from the Square Temple at Eshunna (modern Tell Asmar, Iraq) * Seated scribe * Standard of Ur from the Royal Tombs at Ur (modern Tell el-Muqayyar, Iraq) * Great Pyramids (Menkaura, Khafre, Khufu) and Great Sphinx * King Menkaura and queen * The Code of Hammurabi * Temple of Amun-Re and Hypostyle Hall * Mortuary temple of Hatshepsut * Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and three daughters * Tutankhamun's tomb, innermost coffin * Last judgement of Hunefer, from his tomb (page from the

Book of the Dead The ''Book of the Dead'' ( egy, 𓂋𓏤𓈒𓈒𓈒𓏌𓏤𓉐𓂋𓏏𓂻𓅓𓉔𓂋𓅱𓇳𓏤, ''rw n(y)w prt m hrw(w)'') is an ancient Egyptian funerary text generally written on papyrus and used from the beginning of the New Kingdom ...

) * Lamassu from the citadel of Sargon II, Dur Sharrukin (modern Khorsabad, Iraq) *

Athenian agora The ancient Agora of Athens (also called the Classical Agora) is the best-known example of an ancient Greek agora, located to the northwest of the Acropolis and bounded on the south by the hill of the Areopagus and on the west by the hill k ...

* Anavysos Kouros * Peplos Kore from the Acropolis *

Sarcophagus of the Spouses The ''Sarcophagus of the Spouses'' (Italian: ''Sarcofago degli Sposi'') is considered one of the great masterpieces of Etruscan art. The Etruscans lived in Italy between two main rivers, the Arno and the Tiber, and were in contact with the An ...

* Audience Hall (apadana) of Darius and Xerxes * Temple of Minerva (Veii, near Rome, Italy) and sculpture of Apollo * Tomb of the Triclinium * Niobides Krater * Doryphoros (Spear Bearer) *

Acropolis An acropolis was the settlement of an upper part of an ancient Greek city, especially a citadel, and frequently a hill with precipitous sides, mainly chosen for purposes of defense. The term is typically used to refer to the Acropolis of Athens, ...

* Grave stele of Hegeso * Winged Victory of Samothrace * Great Altar of Zeus and Athena at Pergamon *

House of the Vettii The House of the Vettii is a domus located in the Roman town Pompeii, which was preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The house is named for its owners, two successful freedmen: Aulus Vettius Conviva, an Augustalis, and Aulus Vett ...

* Alexander Mosaic from the House of Faun, Pompeii * Seated boxer * Head of a Roman patrician * Augustus of Prima Porta * Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheater) * Forum of Trajan * Pantheon * Ludovisi Battle Sarcophagus Early Europe and Colonial Americas (200 - 1750 CE) *

Catacomb of Priscilla The Catacomb of Priscilla is an archaeological site on the Via Salaria in Rome, Italy, situated in what was a quarry in Roman times. This quarry was used for Christian burials from the late 2nd century through the 4th century. This catacomb, acco ...

* Santa Sabina * Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well and Jacob Wrestling the Angel, from the Vienna Genesis * San Vitale * Hagia Sophia * Merovingian looped fibulae * Virgin (Theotokos) and Child between Saints Theodore and George * Lindisfarne Gospels: St. Matthew, cross-carpet page; St. Luke portrait page; St. Luke incipit page *

Great Mosque A congregational mosque or Friday mosque (, ''masjid jāmi‘'', or simply: , ''jāmi‘''; ), or sometimes great mosque or grand mosque (, ''jāmi‘ kabir''; ), is a mosque for hosting the Friday noon prayers known as ''jumu'ah''.* * * * * * * ...

* Pyxis of al-Mughira * Church of Sainte-Foy * Bayeux Tapestry * Chartres Cathedral * Dedication Page with Blanche of Castile and King Louis IX of France, Scenes from the Apocalypse * Röttgen Pietà * Arena (Scrovegni) Chapel, including Lamentation *

Golden Haggadah The Golden Haggadah is an illuminated Hebrew manuscript originating around c. 1320-1330 in Catalonia. It is an example of an Illustrated Haggadah, a religious text for Jewish Passover. It contains many lavish illustrations in the High Gothic styl ...

(The Plagues of Egypt, Scenes of Liberation, and Preparation for Passover) *

Alhambra The Alhambra (, ; ar, الْحَمْرَاء, Al-Ḥamrāʾ, , ) is a palace and fortress complex located in Granada, Andalusia, Spain. It is one of the most famous monuments of Islamic architecture and one of the best-preserved palaces of the ...

* Annunciation Triptych (Merode Altarpiece) * Pazzi Chapel * The Arnolfini Portrait * David * Palazzo Rucellai * Madonna and Child with Two Angels * Birth of Venus * Last Supper * Adam and Eve * Sistine Chapel ceiling and altar wall frescoes * School of Athens * Isenheim altarpiece * Entombment of Christ * Allegory of Law and Grace * Venus of Urbino * Frontispiece of the Codex Mendoza * Il Gesù, including Triumph of the Name of Jesus ceiling fresco *

Hunters in the Snow ''The Hunters in the Snow'' ( nl, Jagers in de Sneeuw), also known as ''The Return of the Hunters'', is a 1565 oil-on-wood painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Northern Renaissance work is one of a series of works, five of which still surv ...

* Mosque of Selim II * Calling of Saint Matthew * Henri IV Receives the Portrait of Marie de' Medici, from the Marie de' Medici Cycle * Self-Portrait with Saskia * San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane *

Ecstasy of Saint Teresa The ''Ecstasy of Saint Teresa'' (also known as ''Saint Teresa in Ecstasy'' or the ''Transverberation of Saint Teresa''; it, L'Estasi di Santa Teresa or ) is a sculptural group in white marble set in an elevated aedicule in the Cornaro Chapel of ...

* Angel with Arquebus, Asiel Timor Dei * Las Meninas *

Woman Holding a Balance ''Woman Holding a Balance'' (Dutch: ''Vrouw met weegschaal''), also called ''Woman Testing a Balance'', is an oil painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. At one time the pai ...

* The Palace at Versailles * Screen with the Siege of Belgrade and hunting scene * The Virgin of Guadalupe (Virgen de Guadalupe) * Fruit and Insects * Spaniard and Indian Produce a Mestizo * The Tête à Tête, from Marriage à la Mode Later Europe and Americas (1750 - 1980 CE) * Portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz * A Philosopher Giving a Lecture on the Orrery * The Swing * Monticello *

The Oath of the Horatii ''Oath of the Horatii'' (french: Le Serment des Horaces), is a large painting by the French artist Jacques-Louis David painted in 1784 and now on display in the Louvre in Paris. The painting immediately became a huge success with critics and the ...

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of th ...

* Self-Portrait * Y no hai remedio (And There’s Nothing to Be Done), from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War), plate 15 *

La Grande Odalisque ''Grande Odalisque'', also known as ''Une Odalisque'' or ''La Grande Odalisque'', is an oil painting Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique f ...

* Liberty Leading the People * The Oxbow (View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm) * Still Life in Studio * Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On) * Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament) * The Stone Breakers * Nadar Raising Photography to the Height of Art *

Olympia The name Olympia may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film * ''Olympia'' (1938 film), by Leni Riefenstahl, documenting the Berlin-hosted Olympic Games * ''Olympia'' (1998 film), about a Mexican soap opera star who pursues a career as an athlet ...

* The Saint-Lazare Station * The Horse in Motion * The Valley of Mexico from the Hillside of Santa Isabel (El Valle de México desde el Cerro de Santa Isabel) * The Burghers of Calais * The Starry Night * The Coiffure * The Scream *

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? ''Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?'' (french: D'où venons-nous ? Que sommes-nous ? Où allons-nous ?) is a painting by French artist Paul Gauguin. The painting was created in Tahiti, and is in the Museum of Fine Arts in B ...

* Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building *

Mont Sainte-Victoire Montagne Sainte-Victoire ( Provençal oc, Venturi / Santa Venturi according to classical orthography and oc, Ventùri / Santo Ventùri, label=none according to Mistralian orthography) is a limestone mountain ridge in the south of France whi ...

* Les Demoiselles d'Avignon * The Steerage * The Kiss * The Kiss * The Portuguese * ''Goldfish'' * Improvisation 28 (second version) *

Self-Portrait as a Soldier ''Self-Portrait as a Soldier'', or ''Selbstbildnis als Soldat'', is an Expressionist oil-on-canvas painting by the German artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Kirchner created this self-depiction in 1915, following his medical discharge from military ...

* Memorial Sheet for Karl Liebknecht * Villa Savoye * Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow * Illustration from The Results of the First Five-Year Plan * Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure) * Fallingwater * The Two Fridas * The Migration of the Negro, Panel no. 49 * The Jungle * Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Park * Fountain (second version) * Woman, I * Seagram Building * Marilyn Diptych * Narcissus Garden * The Bay *

Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks ''Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks'' is a weathering steel sculpture by Claes Oldenburg. It is located at Morse College Courtyard, at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut. History Stuart Wrede and a group of fellow Yale archi ...

* Spiral Jetty * House in New Castle County Indigenous Americas (1000 BCE - 1980 CE) *

Chavín de Huántar Chavín de Huántar is an archaeological site in Peru, containing ruins and artifacts constructed as early as 1200 BC, and occupied until around 400–500 BC by the Chavín, a major pre-Inca culture. The site is located in the Ancash Region, n ...

* Mesa Verde cliff dwellings * Yaxchilán *

Great Serpent Mound The Great Serpent Mound is a 1,348-foot-long (411 m), three-foot-high prehistoric effigy mound located in Peebles, Ohio. The mound itself resides on the Serpent Mound crater plateau, running along the Ohio Brush Creek in Adams County, Ohio. ...

* Templo Mayor (Main Temple) * Ruler’s feather headdress (probably of Motecuhzoma II) * City of Cusco, including Qorikancha (Inka main temple), Santo Domingo (Spanish colonial convent), and Walls at Saqsa Waman (Sacsayhuaman) * Maize cobs * City of Machu Picchu * All-T’oqapu tunic * Bandolier bag * Transformation mask * Painted elk hide * Black-on-black ceramic vessel Africa (1100 - 1980 CE) * Conical tower and circular wall of

Great Zimbabwe Great Zimbabwe is a medieval city in the south-eastern hills of Zimbabwe near Lake Mutirikwi and the town of Masvingo. It is thought to have been the capital of a great kingdom during the country's Late Iron Age about which little is known. Con ...

* Great Mosque of Djenné * Wall plaque, from Oba's palace * Sika dwa kofi (Golden Stool) * Ndop (portrait figure) of * Power figure (Nkisi n'kondi) * Female (Pwo) mask * Portrait mask (Mblo) * Bundu mask * Ikenga (shrine figure) * Lukasa (memory board) * Aka elephant mask * Reliquary figure (byeri) * Veranda post of enthroned king and senior wife (Opo Ogoga) West and Central Asia (500 BCE - 1980 CE) * Petra, Jordan: Treasury and Great Temple * Buddha * The Kaaba * Jowo Rinpoche, enshrined in the Jokhang Temple *

Dome of the Rock The Dome of the Rock ( ar, قبة الصخرة, Qubbat aṣ-Ṣakhra) is an Islamic shrine located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, a site also known to Muslims as the ''al-Haram al-Sharif'' or the Al-Aqsa Compound. Its initial ...

* Great Mosque (Masjid-e Jameh) * Folio from a Qur'an * Basin (Baptistère de St. Louis) * Bahram Gur Fights the Karg, folio from the Great Il-Khanid Shahnama * The Court of Gayumars, folio from Shah Tahmasp's Shahnama *

The Ardabil Carpet The Ardabil Carpet (or Ardebil Carpet) is the name of two different famous Persian carpets, the largest and best-known now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Originally there were two presumably identical carpets, and the London carpe ...

South, East, and Southeast Asia (300 BCE - 1980 CE) * Great Stupa at Sanchi *

Terra cotta warriors The Terracotta Army is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210–209 BCE with the purpose of protecting the emperor in ...

from mausoleum of the first Qin emperor of China * Funeral banner of Lady Dai (Xin Zhui) *

Longmen caves The Longmen Grottoes () or Longmen Caves are some of the finest examples of Buddhist art#China, Chinese Buddhist art. Housing tens of thousands of statues of Shakyamuni Buddha and his disciples, they are located south of present-day Luoyang i ...

* Gold and jade crown * Todai-ji * Borobudur Temple * Angkor, the temple of Angkor Wat, and the city of Angkor Thom, Cambodia *

Lakshmana Temple Lakshmana ( sa, लक्ष्मण, lit=the fortunate one, translit=Lakṣmaṇa), also spelled as Laxmana, is the younger brother of Rama and his loyalist in the Hindu epic ''Ramayana''. He bears the epithets of Saumitra () and Ramanuja (). ...

* Travelers among Mountains and Streams * Shiva as Lord of Dance (Nataraja) * Night Attack on the Sanjô Palace * The

David Vases The David Vases are a pair of blue-and-white temple vases from the Yuan dynasty. The vases have been described as the "best-known porcelain vases in the world" and among the most important blue-and-white Chinese porcelains. Though they are fi ...

* Portrait of Sin Sukju (1417-1475) * Forbidden City * Ryoan-ji * Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings * Taj Mahal * White and Red Plum Blossoms * Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as the Great Wave, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji *

Chairman Mao en Route to Anyuan ''Chairman Mao en Route to Anyuan'' is a 1967 oil painting by Liu Chunhua. It pictures a young Mao Zedong as one of the common people, ready to take on any obstacle that comes forth. This artwork is a strong example of Chinese communist propaga ...

The Pacific (700 - 1980 CE) * Nan Madol * Moai on platform (ahu) * 'Ahu 'ula (feather cape) * Staff god *

Female deity A goddess is a female deity. In many known cultures, goddesses are often linked with literal or metaphorical pregnancy or imagined feminine roles associated with how women and girls are perceived or expected to behave. This includes themes of ...

* Buk (mask) * Hiapo (

tapa Tapa, TAPA, Tapas or Tapasya may refer to: Media *Tapas (website), a webtoon site, formerly known as Tapastic * ''Tapas'' (film), a 2005 Spanish film * ''Tapasya'' (1976 film), an Indian Hindi-language film * ''Tapasya'' (1992 film), a Nepalese f ...

) * Tamati Waka Nene * Navigation chart * Malagan display and mask * Presentation of Fijian mats and tapa cloths to Queen Elizabeth II Global Contemporary (1980 CE - Present) * The Gates * Vietnam Veterans Memorial * Horn Players * Summer Trees * Androgyne III *

A Book from the Sky ''A Book from the Sky'' () is the title of a book produced by Chinese artist Xu Bing in the style of fine editions from the Song and Ming dynasties, but filled entirely with meaningless glyphs designed to resemble traditional Chinese characters. ...

* Pink Panther * Untitled #228, from the History Portraits series * '' The French Collection Part I, #1: Dancing at the Louvre * Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People) * Earth's Creation * Rebellious Silence, from the Women of Allah series * En la Barberia no se Llora (No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop) * Pisupo Lua Afe (Corned Beef 2000) * Electronic Superhighway * The Crossing * Guggenheim Museum Bilbao * Pure Land * Lying with the Wolf * Darkytown Rebellion * The Swing (after Fragonard) * Old Man's Cloth * Stadia II * Preying Mantra * Shibboleth * MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts * Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds) Notes

References

External links

{{Spoken Wikipedia, AP Art History.ogg, date=2020-04-04 Art history Advanced Placement Visual arts education