This course will consider how art and artists developed and flourished in the North and South America from the early pre-contact period to the present day, stressing the conceptual and iconographic continuities over subsequent generations and across a diverse range of cultures and regions. In addition to examining major works of art in detail, this course will examine issues relating to indigenous artistic training and the cultural institutions in North and South America, the mutual influences of European and indigenous traditions on each other, the effects of colonialism and ensuing efforts to preserve heritage, the way visual images both reinforce and create ideas of national identity, and forms of expression in the post-modern age.