I wish to write this review to help future generation studets who consider this class as an GE, based on the grading, exams, essays, professor, lectures, TAs, and other aspects, etc..

Grading Distribution: 25% 5 response papers (5% each) + 27% Midterm Essay + 28% Final Essay + 20% Discussion Participation. Each reponse paper is about 400 words, 1-2 pages long. Midterm essay is an assignment consists of three prompts, 600-700 words (3-4 pages) for each prompt, altogether 1800-2100 words in total. Final Exam is an essay of 1000 words, 6-7 pages in length. All the essays and papers are based on the reading materials assigned in class, and some part of the lecture materials. As long as you do the readings, you'll be fine with those essays.

About Grading: The grading on the five response papers, midterm essays and final exam essay are completely up to your TAs. So it might be terrible to have to bad and harsh-grading TA, who can screw your grades as well as your gpa. On the other hand, it will be very very easy for you to get through the quarter if you luckily meet an angel TA. The final grade is based on absolute scale (93=A), so you cannot lose too many points on each of the paper in order to get an A. My suggestion on all the papers is that if you are not sure about that, you can schedule with your TAs to talk about what you wrote or going to write in your essays to make sure that those contents are what your TAs want to see. If this aint work either, it is really necessary to switch section (swith TA) or consider to PNP/drop the class, as TAs have full decision on your grades and your fate in this class.

About lectures and professor Mathur: The lectures are recorded and can be accessed on bruinlearn, so it is not necessary to go to the in-person lectures. I never met with professor Mathur so I cannot comment, but I think her lectures are not that interesting, which you might fell asleep in fact. The lectures and the materials are not that intriguing to be honest.

About TAs: This Art History 25 course has a quite large TA team. We have 6 TAs this quarter I remember, so it is all about your luck that which TA you enrolled with. Different TAs have very different grading standards, thus possibly might have very different A rate (this is not up to Professor Mathur, who just in charge of delivering lectures and design exams), which means it is possible that almost all of the students of one TA's section get A while students from another TA's section can very hardly get A. From my point of view, I would like to recommend my TA Amy Crum. She is a PhD candidate in this field, and she is very nice, professional, caring, and give good grades overall. I got 1 point lost in altogether the five response papers, 24/27 in midterm paper (the hardest part of the quarter), and full mark 28/28 in the final paper, which I think is a very nice grader who is willing to give her students good grades. She also accomodated for students who are not able to go to the class in person through the online zoom conduct. I would say take Amy's sections if they are available, and you will go through the quarter easily under her help and her easy&fine grading standards. Btw to mention that I heard one TA named Natalie Zhang graded assignments very harshly according to my friend, so try to avoid her section if that's possible unless you want challenges.

Workload: The response paper is assigned roughly biweekly, so the workload I think is okay and managable. Readings are assigned every week, about 50-80 pages everytime, but it is fine to just scan through. It is not wise to leave all the readings until the midterm week and final week, because you'll have to read tons of reading in a very short period of time in that case and will have VERY GREAT PRESSURE. Midterm week and Final week can be a little bit more exhausting, as you will have to synthesize and integrate all the materials you went through in the previous weeks, but still it is managable.

Conclusion: Overall, this class is a GE with medium workload and medium difficulty. It may not be that hard like those history GEs, but still it requires you to spend some time every week to study for it in order to get a decent grade. All that matters in this class is your TA, who can fully decide your grade and fate in this class. If you meet a TA that grades very harshly, then it will be wise to switch TA or PNP or drop the class. If you meet a great TA, then it will be a quite easy GE. It might be hard to determine which TA is good before attending the class and getting assignments graded, so I suggest that go over all the reviews to see which TA's sections are great and which TA's section should be avoided. Good luck!

Professor Mathur is a really good lecturer and the materials she taught were also pretty interesting. Before this class, I've honestly never thought about museums in a critical fashion, but I grew to appreciate the politics and structures of the museums over the course of the class. My TA, Felix, held extremely engaging discussion sessions and was really helpful. The midterm consisted of three questions that required us to write ~600 words each and the final was one large essay that required us to write ~1000 words. The midterm questions were straight forward but the essay prompt for the final was actually pretty vague - each TA had different interpretations of the prompt and the whole class was also pretty confused. We were given a week to finish the midterm and 4-5 days to finish the final essay, which was a little rushed. Despite the slightly lengthy midterm and final, I would still recommend taking this class with Mathur since people can actually learn stuff.

This class taught me so much about the not only the art world, but the effects of museums on infrastructure, communities, and culture. I loved this class so much and Prof Mathur is the perfect person to teach it.

Class was super easy and I never went to lecture but still got an A. However BEWARE OF TAs. Its all essays, and the TAs are the only one who grades them. As a person, felix was super nice, but awful for grading. Prof was chill and changed my grades when I met w her, but do not take through felix.

This class is amazing! I would recommend this class to anyone, regardless of major. The assignments are super manageable and you can pass by easily without doing the readings, or doing less than half.

There's a short essay (1-2 pages) due every week with readings. It's based on the lecture so make sure you attend and take notes

The midterm was three questions that needed 3 museum case studies as examples per question. It's a take-home test and I did it in a few hours. I only got 2 points off.

The final is not a research paper (thank god! a lot of art history final's are research papers). It was a 1500 word essay based on one question. You had to use 3 museum case studies. Very easy.

Overall, a very easy and chill class. The lecture is very clear and easy to understand. Professor Mathur is the best!

Grading Scale:
25% response papers (5 points each, 5 papers of 1-2 page length)
20% discussion attendance and participation
27% take home midterm (three 500-600 word questions)
28% take home final (1000 word essay, cumulative)

Everything is essentially graded by points instead of percentage, so papers are 5 each, midterm 27, final 28—every point off is a percentage off your grade.

Overall Review:
The class is very interesting, and you need no previous experience or interest in museums to enjoy the content. The content and information is diverse and fun to learn. However, I am a STEM major with little interest in humanities, and this course was more challenging for me than I thought it would be. The readings were very convoluted and hard to understand for me, as I struggle with comprehension and concentration when it comes to readings. However, I was able to make it out with an A despite this. Just a warning for those who are not built for humanities: this class should not be treated as an easy GE. There was also more writing than expected, due to the response papers, but again not too difficult. All assignments and tests are open notes (obviously), so that is what helped me a lot. Generally, I do not regret taking this class, and I recommend it to others, especially humanities people!

Lecture:
For my quarter, it was in person on tuesdays and asynchronous on thursday (even though it said synchronous on the class planner). Asynchronous lectures are pre recorded videos. The content was overall very interesting and Mathur is a great lecturer.

Discussion:
Usually consisted of a group project (15 minutes to compile an informal presentation with a group and then present) and a short discussion afterwards. Very easy to get participation credit—just show up and maybe say something for the presentation or for the discussion.

Response Papers:
The first one was more of a fun activity than a response paper, but the rest are answering questions in a short essay style. Definitely not difficult prompts, but depending on your TA it can be graded harshly on format and citation. For citation Mathur allows any form you are comfortable with! Even though APA is not typically used for humanities, it was allowed but make sure to ask first.

Midterm and Final:
Both the midterm and final are take home. For the midterm we were given roughly three days, and for the final we had five. Midterm was, in my opinion, harder than the final. It was basically three short essays (don’t just do a chunk of text for each), so three different questions to answer which can be tiring. However, even though it’s 1500-1800 words overall, there was a lot of content to write about so it was not too bad. Depending on your TA, it can be graded pretty harshly (again mostly citations, paragraph format, thesis, etc). The final seemed to be graded easier, likely because the format of the essay was clearer. However, the prompts for both can be a bit vague, but the professor and TAs offer office hours for clarification!

Textbook:
There is no textbook! Just readings assigned and provided weekly by Mathur. They can range from two small articles and a short video to 40 pages and a 30 minute video, so check the syllabus and stay on track. They should be read and watched before discussion sections, as the content discussed will usually be related. They are usually needed for response papers as well, and are very useful for exams. Lectures also discuss papers (sometimes thoroughly and sometimes in passing), so reading thoroughly is not too necessary—just get the general gist.

I really enjoyed this class as a GE! The topic was super interesting to me and Mathur is a really good lecturer. She had really short lectures per week (5 15-20 min so it was easy to keep up with. I got a B+ only because I was going through it first quarter TT but it is definitely not hard to get an A even if you don't like writing. The midterm, assignments, and final were basically all papers, but spaced out so it wasn't a lot at once. Also, I can't remember how much was the final like 1000 words? But the midterm was 500-600 words per question for 3 question. My TA Zichen was also really nice and understanding and went over concepts thoroughly during discussion.

I didn't see many Bruinwalk reviews of this class prior to enrolling, but I'm glad I took it anyway. I found the material to be engaging, and as someone who's never taken an art history class before, it was very approachable. I appreciated that we focused more on analyzing the role of museums in society than on memorizing dates or paintings. In my opinion, this class would qualify as an "easy GE".

Grading scheme:
20% Discussion Participation
20% Response Questions
10% Collection Reflections
24% Midterm
26% Final

The class is set up so that there are weekly 1-2 page papers due before discussion (the response questions and collection reflections), as well as 5-6 readings and asynchronous mini lecture videos (15-25 mins long each). The midterm consists of 3 short answer questions (500-600 words each) and the final is a 1000 word essay. The workload is very doable, and the TAs grade leniently. Overall, I would definitely recommend this class.

The professor teaches well and allows you to succeed in the class. The weekly readings can be difficult to complete due to length, complexity, and disinterest, but you can definitely scan them to get the main ideas and do fine. If you are able to read quickly, the workload is very light. On another note, the class is quite interesting and can be fun.

This class is a great GE to take, and I really learned a lot about museums and their effects on artwork and society. Your grade depends on your TA, and I was lucky enough to have a great TA. That being said, the weekly readings are reasonable and are actually useful towards the class. Professor Mathur's lectures (pre-recorded/asynchronous) were very concise and easy to understand, and I definitely recommend watching them as they aren't that long and help to clear up more complex topics from the readings. The weekly assignments consist of either a reading response (one page cap) or a collection reflection. The one-pagers were harder, because you had to be pretty concise. The collection reflections were super easy. Overall, the workload is light to medium. Both the midterm and final are papers. The midterm was straightforward, and the questions we were given to write about were easy to write about. The final on the other hand was more abstract and harder to write, but overall, this class was very enjoyable and interesting.