Hello colleagues, professors, and all, 

I am Rowan L. Grider, an undergraduate Art History student at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Recently I found out that art majors in PSOA (excluding film, theater, dance, and a few more) have free admission to the Milwaukee Art Museum while art history majors do not. Although the major of art history isn’t within the PSOA, they should be allowed free admission into the Milwaukee Art Museum because of the abundance of topic related material on display.

Art history students have to pay the $20 general student admission to a facility that exists because of and is staffed primarily by art historians (curators, archivists, and those who have degrees in art history). Yet the people who will succeed them aren’t offered free admission? All art which has been created is relevant to art history, even contemporary art. It’s important for artists to be exposed to art, however it is just as important for those studying the history of art to also be exposed to it. 

Artists and Art Historians are two sides of the same coin, they keep each other’s professions alive. When the artist is gone, the art historian keeps them alive. And art historians need artists or else the profession wouldn’t exist.

I’ve been told that the Art History Department has had this inquiry for many years, and has tried to intact change to no avail. So I figured I’d give it a try!