AP Art History

The AP Art History course welcomes students into the global art world to engage with its forms and content as they research, discuss, read, and write about art, artists, art making, and responses to and interpretations of art. By investigating specific course content of 250 works of art characterized by diverse artistic traditions from prehistory to the present, the students develop in-depth, holistic understanding of the history of art from a global perspective. Students learn and apply skills of visual, contextual, and comparative analysis to engage with a variety of art forms, developing understanding of individual works and interconnections across history. AP Art History is the equivalent of a two-semester introductory college or university art history survey course.

Unit 1: Global Prehistory, 30,000–500 BCE

Unit 2: Ancient Mediterranean, 3500 BCE–300 CE

Unit 3: Early Europe and Colonial Americas, 200–1750 CE

Unit 4: Later Europe and Americas, 1750–1980 CE

Unit 5: Indigenous Americas, 1000 BCE–1980 CE

Unit 6: Africa, 1100–1980 CE

Unit 7: West and Central Asia, 500 BCE–1980 CE

Unit 8: South, East, and Southeast Asia, 300 BCE–1980 CE

Unit 9: The Pacific, 700–1980 CE

Unit 10: Global Contemporary, 1980 CE to Present

Big Idea 1: Culture

Big Idea 2: Interactions With Other Cultures

Big Idea 3: Theories and Interpretations

Big Idea 4: Materials, Processes, and Techniques

Big Idea 5: Purpose and Audience