Art History 291 - COLQ:TOPC-LIBRARIES

Students may take up to two semesters of ARH 291, “Topics in Art History,” as long as the topics are different.: This course looks at the famed third-century BCE library at Alexandria, Egypt, precedents like the library of the Assyrian king Assurbanipal at Nineveh (with epics and omen texts on clay tablets) and later extant examples like the Library of Celsus at Ephesus to discuss the development of the library as a public building type. We also compare later innovations like Labrouste’s Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, Snøhetta’s award-winning 2002 Bibliotheca Alexandrina (on the site of the ancient library) and Maya Lin’s renovation of Neilson Library (under construction), analyzing how the buildings themselves make knowledge manifest. Group A, Counts for ARU