Thanks so much for your interest in studying and working in the History of Art and Architecture department or the Ph.D. program in Film and Visual Studies.
My policies
Neither of my departments interviews graduate candidates as part of the application process, but in March or April accepted applicants will be invited to Harvard to meet me, other faculty, and current students, and get a feel for to the campus and the department before they make final decisions (with all travel and lodging at Harvard's expense). Therefore, it's my policy not to schedule meetings or calls with prospective students until after admissions decisions have been made. I could go into a long justification for this, but suffice it to say that it's in the interest of fairness as well as time management.
That said, I am happy to answer by e-mail any questions you might have for me specifically. If you don't have a question that will affect either your decision to apply or how you write your application, you do not need to contact me directly. I will read your application carefully, I promise. (Note that some professors do like to hear from prospective students in advance. This is my personal policy only).
Questions about the application process or the department or program that aren't specifically for me but can't be answered by looking carefully at the websites (of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences or the department/program itself) are best answered by the able administrators in each department: Emily Amendola for AFVS (amendola [at] fas.harvard.edu) and Sean Fisher for HAA (seanfisher [at] fas.harvard.edu).
Applications are submitted electronically through the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences website. There is a section where you indicate professors you would like to study with--please list my name if you want to be certain I will see your application in the initial round of reading. HAA applicants: if you would like me to be your primary (dissertation) advisor, you should choose "Contemporary" as your subfield instead of or in addition to "Modern, 20th Century."
Diversity among graduate students is important to me, and to my departments and the university. If you identify as a member of an under-represented minority group or groups, or are a first-generation college graduate, please do check the appropriate box(es) in the application. Use the additional information field or your personal statement to give necessary nuance to our understanding of those identifications, or to indicate other aspects of your background that we should know about. If you have questions about any of this please check out the important resources and contacts on the GSAS website, and reach out to me or to the GSAS Dean for Diversity and Minority Affairs, Sheila Thompson.
General advice for graduate school applicants in art history/visual/media studies
The best advice on when, where, and how to apply to graduate school comes from college professors you've studied with, especially in the discipline you plan to study. But not all prospective graduate students have advisers familiar with the current particularities of the application process or the US model of graduate education in general. This page is my attempt to level the field by offering the generalizable advice I typically give undergraduates who are are considering graduate school in my field. Please keep in mind that everything below is based on my own personal, situated perspective and my limited knowledge, and hasn't been fact-checked. These are my experience-based opinions only, not rulings on what you must or must not do. And I am primarily talking about applying to Harvard and to the Ph.D. programs in the departments of HAA and AFVS.
Graduate school admissions are different than college in that you are applying to the department (or program within a department) rather than to the university. This means that the reputation of the institution overall might not correspond to the quality of the Ph.D. program in your field. The best programs for you to apply to are the ones that have faculty working in your area of interest whose whose books, articles, or exhibitions you admire. Look at the articles and books you found most exciting to read as a student, and see where the author is based as a professor. If you are fortunate, you'll have an advisor in college who can direct you to the most appropriate programs for you, but everyone can look up professors' publications, c.v.'s and websites. The bottom line is that you need to find the programs where there is a professor or professors you would want to study with, who could advise the kind of dissertation you hope to write.
Department staff and the folks at GSAS can answer most informational questions about the program (size of entering class, funding packages, fields represented, alumni placement...). They can also give you practical advice about important issues: how to frame your statement, what to submit as a writing sample, and who should write your letters of recommendation (if there's something they can't answer, that's a good time to email me directly). Please inform yourself as well as possible, because too often, otherwise great candidates make uninformed choices that make it hard for them to rise to the top of a highly competititve pool.
For example, an applicant might reasonably assume the "writing sample" included in the application is for evaluating your prose. In fact, while writing as such does matter, my colleagues and I read these papers in order to get a sense of the kind and quality of work we can expect you to do in our classes, and eventually in your dissertation. So if your very best college paper is not about art or visual culture, it won't be as helpful to you as your second-best paper if it is on a relevant topic. And we hope to see an extended piece of work, one that you worked on independently over weeks or months. Other kinds of assignments or essays don't give us the information we need.
When it comes to the letters of recommendation, an applicant might reasonably think it best to ask employers they've recently worked with rather than former professors from some years back. Even if you plan to take your Ph.D. to work outside the university, you will be a student first. In my opinion at minimumum one of your three letters should be from a professor. That said, there are certainly cases where you should have a supervisor write for you, especially if your work for them was related to art and visual media. But, as a rule, it still won't be as helpful as a letter from a professor. It's a question of who can evaluate exactly the skills and competencies needed for success in graduate school. If none of your recommenders worked with you in a teaching or advising capacity, explain the situation in your statement of purpose or the section of the application that asks for additional information.
Along these lines, if someone says they will write for you but that they can't offer their strong support, don't have them write. A negative or lukewarm letter will not help, and in almost all cases will hurt your application. (Again, if you have no choice but to use such a letter to complete your application, be sure that somewhere in the application you explicitly address the problem that left you without 3 appropriate recommenders.)
Do you need a master's degree (M.A) before applying for a Ph.D. program? Not at all. Some Ph.D. students each year come to us straight from college. That said, many accepted students in both my departments at Harvard will be in or have completed an MA program. It can help in several situations: There's the chance to produce a relevant paper, or a stronger one; you'll have a better sense of who you are as a scholar and where your work fits in the wider field; or it could demonstrate you can succeed in graduate-level work. If you didn't major, or minor, or take several college courses in a relevant discipline; if you've spent many years in unrelated job(s); or if you're not 100% sure this is what you want to do with the next 7 years, your application is likely to be stronger once you've completed the master's degree. However, we are very aware that most MA programs cost a lot of money, and we never let it be a strike against someone if they do not have one. Once they are at Harvard, it's my experience that while it may be a bit smoother going at the beginning for students who have an MA, the advantage evens out very quickly, and doesn't at all determine which students are most successful in the end. Therefore in my opinion it is only rarely worth going into debt to get an MA, espeically if the Ph.D. is your ultimate goal.
What if you are someone who really needs the MA in order to be a competitive candidate? If you have family support or savings to pay tuition, great. Otherwise, you can apply only to MA programs that offer merit-based scholarships and/or teaching assistantships (and only go if you get one). You can apply for external scholarships for graduate study (like those from the Ford Foundation) at the same time you apply to MA programs. Or, taking one or two classes at a community college, university extension program, or college summer school might be enough to give you a bit of knowledge and experience (it certainly demonstrates committment). Enrolling for credit will require tuition, but you can also ask the professor of a class you're interested in whether they will allow you to audit (then get to know them and show them your work before asking for a letter). Even if a professor from many years ago doesn't remember you, they may be willing to write for you after a quick Zoom conversation to catch up (send them work from their class if you have it, as well as list of courses you took, cv, and writing samples). You can work independently on a new paper or on revising one from college to make it stronger, and seek out advice from knowledgeable readers in the field. And, if you really want/need the master's degree, you might want to consider programs in the UK, Canada, and elsewhere where it will typically take one year rather than two or more.
Most graduate programs require students to have or acquire at least one foreign language, and for many fields of art history you will need more than one as a practical matter. In my experience, it won't disqualify an otherwise fantastic applicant if they haven't begun study of a language they need, but it does add a degree of difficulty to their graduate school experience and that is something we have to weigh in our final decisions. The key thing is to have, or have a plan to get, advanced knowledge of at least one language that will help you in your research and/or professional life. In my field of contemporary art history almost any language could be relevant, depending on your area of interest (and the more the better!). It's possible to start from scratch and meet the requirement in the summers or while you are in coursework at Harvard, but it's not ideal. I recommend taking every opportunity to get your study of a language underway in advance of your application to graduate school.
Because of the speed of the programs, students must be able to reserach and write in English when they apply. It doesn't have to be perfect--you will improve quickly once you are studying here, and there are resources to help if need be--but in my areas successful applicants are typically fluent in English at the time they apply. Otherwise language becomes too much of a barrier to meaningful participation in class and adds too much difficulty to the writing process for you to stay in sync with peers.
As a final note, keep in mind that the Ph.D. programs I'm involved in at Harvard are small (typically, 3-4 students accepted each year in FVS and 9-12 in HAA). Each department must wind up with a class of entering students in a range of different subfields. Every year, we have to make excruciating decisions about how to "force rank" among equally extraordinary candidates, all of whom we would accept if we could. When you are on the receiving end of the decisions it can be easy to imagine they express a simple judgement of relative merit, but the reality is that we can recognize a candidate's extraordinary aptitude, talent, and qualifications, and still not be able to offer them a spot. So while being accepted to a Ph.D. program indicates that your application was terrific, not getting accepted isn't a reliable indicator that it wasn't. It may well be worth trying again next year, or honing your sense of which programs are and aren't right for the kind of work you want to do.