Predicting Topics for AP Art History Exam

I'm preparing for the AP Art History exam and I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. How does one predict what might come up on the test? Are there any common themes or topics that the exam tends to focus on more?

The AP Art History exam definitely covers a vast amount of content, making it quite challenging when it comes to studying. One way to manage this is to focus more on understanding the context, significance, and insights of various artworks rather than only memorizing the titles, artists, and dates.

The exam will reflect the distribution of content throughout the AP Art History course. To be more specific, the artworks are divided into ten content areas with the following percentages:

1. Global Prehistory (3-11%)

2. Ancient Mediterranean (15-22%)

3. Early Europe and Colonial Americas (17-24%)

4. Later Europe and Americas (20-27%)

5. Indigenous Americas (3-11%)

6. Africa (3-11%)

7. West and Central Asia (3-9%)

8. South, East, and Southeast Asia (8-15%)

9. Pacific (3-7%)

10. Global Contemporary (8-10%)

These proportions will give you an idea of what content areas have more artworks represented on the exam. For instance, the areas of Early Europe and Colonial Americas, and Later Europe and Americas cover a significant portion. Focus your efforts on these areas but don't ignore the others.

While the College Board provides 250 specific reference images for AP Art History, the test can also ask about artworks or cultures not explicitly mentioned in that set of images. Therefore, understanding broader themes and artistic tendencies within each culture and period will help you tackle such questions. These could include the influences of religion, shifts in political power, cultural interactions, developments in technology, and others.

In terms of the type of questions you might encounter: expect to see multiple-choice questions comparing two or more images, and free-response questions where you're given an image and asked to analyze it in depth. There will also likely be a comparison essay where you're asked to compare two artworks, and another question where you're expected to choose an artwork that fits a given theme and justify the choice.

Remember, the intent of the exam is for you to prove your understanding of artistic movements and their contexts, so emphasize depth of knowledge and understanding rather than extensive memorization.

Start studying early and practice lots of past questions to familiarize yourself with the format. You could also leverage some online resources, including the study guides and live review sessions on the AP Students website. Good luck with your studies!