Richard William Ellis

After Richard William Ellis attended the Dept. of Art History’s prospective graduate student open house in 2024, his choice became clear.

“I was won over by the [Art History] faculty, staff, and current graduate students, as well as by the Chazen Museum of Art and the Kohler Art Library, both of which have excellent collections for study and practice,” Ellis says.

Today the third-year Art History PhD candidate works with students at the Chazen. Up until the museum temporarily closed this summer to reinstall the collection, Ellis drafted educational materials, led gallery tours and facilitated visits to the print study room — all of which will be enhanced as the redesigned Chazen reopens. 

“Collaborating with instructors from across various departments and participating in their students’ learning experiences has been such an awesome gift that connects me to the broader UW–Madison community,” says Ellis. “To continue doing the work I love — but with the entire museum fully open and refreshed — is something I am extremely excited about.” 

He says that a hidden gem of the Dept. of Art History is the variety of online summer courses taught by passionate graduate students. These classes are exclusively available to undergraduate students to satisfy a range of required credits, minors and certificates. Instructors design their own courses at this level, focusing on topics in Art History that truly matter to students as they consider the future. 

“People are reaching back into the past to ask questions and solve problems that are critical to our time, which I think is a very powerful thing,” Ellis says. “Students today are increasingly interested in using art to explore topics like social justice and ecocriticism, and professors have been responding to this growing demand.”