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AP^®

You are strongly encouraged to challenge your year long study of art history by taking the AP Art History Exam. There are opportunities for you to earn college credit or advanced placement.

About the Exam

The exam is three hours. You'll have one hour to answer 115 multiple-choice questions, and two hours to complete seven short essays (based on slides) and two long essays.

Section I: Multiple-Choice

The multiple-choice section gives you the chance to demonstrate your knowledge of a wide range of art history topics including:

• Basic information about artists, schools, and movements
• Chronological periods, general geographic origin, and significant dates
• Cross-currents among artistic traditions (including non-European ones)
• The subjects, styles, and techniques of particular works of art
• Contextual issues such as patronage, gender, and functions of works of art

Substantive questions will continue to be asked in the multiple-choice section about cultures that have traditionally been included in the survey (Europe, the ancient Near East, ancient Egypt, and global Islam). In this section, however, you are only required to do a formal analysis on works of art from other cultures beyond the European tradition.

The multiple-choice section has two parts, Part A and Part B:

In part A, you'll answer four sets of questions based on slides of works of art. You'll have four minutes to look at each slide or set of slides, and answer questions based on what you see and your knowledge of art history. The questions focus on issues including the function of works of art, patronage, period styles, chronology, and technique.

In part B, you'll answer questions on a wide range of topics. There are no slides in Part B but some of the questions may be based on black-and-white illustrations printed in the test booklet.

Unlike other multiple-choice tests, random guessing can hurt your final score. While you don't lose anything for leaving a question blank, one third of a point is subtracted for each incorrect answer on the test. But if you have some knowledge of the question and can eliminate one or more answers, it's usually to your advantage to choose what you believe is the best answer from the remaining choices.

Section II: Free-Response

The free-response section consists of seven short essays based on slides and/or primary source material and two long essays about typical and significant problems in art history. Most of the essays in this section direct the students to look at both familiar and unfamiliar works of art and primary source documents. While identification or attribution is sometimes required, the questions essentially test your ability to apply knowledge to the analysis of the relationship between how and why works of art communicate meaning.

Each short essay is 5 or 10 minutes and is based on one or two slides, and/or a quotation from a primary source or document. In this section, the substantive questions will continue to be asked about cultures that have traditionally been included in the survey (Europe, the ancient Near East, ancient Egypt, and global Islam), but you are only required to do formal analysis and/or make formal comparisons about works of art from other cultures beyond the European tradition. The seven short essays are worth 35 percent of your total grade.

Your essays should demonstrate ability to analyze works of art in context of historical evidence and interpretation, examining such issues as politics, religion, patronage, gender, and ethnicity. Your analysis of the work of art within historical context and function should relate to appropriate visual concepts while applying correctly the art historical terms in discussing each art form. When discussing works of art, your essay should demonstrate correct knowledge of subject matter, iconography, style, material, technique, significance, function and purpose.

When answering the short essay questions, remember:

• Your personal value judgments and comparisons of the works in question are not pertinent to the examination. Avoid inserting your opinions of the art works into your essays.
• The best essays include careful visual analysis as well as relevant and correct social, contextual, and art historical information. Always learn to frame a written argument that relates how and why works of art communicate visual meaning
• One of the seven essays will test your responsibilty for primary sources in the form of a document based question. This primary source could be a written document or a visual, or a combination of both. The better responses tend to first decipher the written document within the overall framework and then engage in making a direct connection between the parts of the written document and the visual(s).
• For the best possible score, you should answer the questions in carefully constructed full sentences. Don't simply list the characteristics of the work in question.
• Learn to simplify and rephrase the question into specific task you need to perform on the essay and respond to each one directly and fully.

Section II also contains two 30-minute long essay questions that total 25 percent of your grade. The questions are designed to address significant art historical problems, including contextual, stylistic, chronological, and patronage issues. No visuals are provided in this section and you are required to select and fully identify specific works of art as evidence in your essays. Therefore, the choice of the works you choose to discuss is critical to a complete and satisfactory essay; the examples must be appropriate and the works themselves must form the thesis and drive the argument.

The approach to successfully writing the long essays is very much like the strategy for writing the short-essays. It is recommended that you spend at least five minutes planning and twenty five minutes writing each essay. In the past, the questions from the long essay sections have been largely thematic in kind that take into account broad global art historical experiences and different cultural values.

Remember, in one of the 30-minute essays you must fully identify and discuss at least one work of art from a culture beyond the European tradition. Examples may be drawn from areas traditionally covered by the AP Art History course and exam, including ancient Ancient Near East, ancient Egypt, and Islam, but the better responses tend to draw from areas not previously covered, including Africa (beyond Egypt), the Americas, Asia, and Oceania.

Scoring the Exam

The multiple-choice section contributes 40 percent of the final grade. The free-response section makes up 60 percent of the final grade. The short-essay questions are graded on a 0 to 4 scale, and the long essay-questions are graded on a 0 to 9 scale. Each of the nine essays in the free-response section is read by a different Reader; this means nine different Readers would read your nine essays. The Readers of the free-response section of the exam are experienced college professors and high school teachers from all across the country.

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