The Art Department at Mills College includes both art history and studio art. The Art History Program, which offers a wide range of European, American, and Asian art history courses, incorporates broad cultural and historical perspectives. The major prepares students for graduate study and for careers in museums, galleries, arts administration, and art criticism.

In addition to a lively and diverse curriculum in art history, students benefit from several endowed programs. Each year, a special course is given under the auspices of the Denise Beirnes Studies in Art History Endowment (since 1993–94, offerings have surveyed African American, Chicano, Latin American, Asian American, and lesbian art histories). The Jane Green Endowment for Studies in Art History and Criticism each year brings a distinguished speaker to campus to give public lectures as well as classroom presentations (speakers to date have included Lucy R. Lippard, Linda Nochlin, Vishakha Desai, Elizabeth Cropper, Alberto Manguel, Apinan Poshyananda, Whitney Chadwick, Deborah Willis, and Wu Hung). The Art Department also offers the Correnah W. Wright Lecture Series on Contemporary Art, which features prominent artists and writers (speakers to date have included Dave Hickey, Fred Wilson, Catherine Opie, May Stevens, Komar and Melamid, Dinh Q. Le, and Shahzia Sikander).

Internships are offered by major museums and galleries in the Bay Area to students who are interested in exploring careers as curators, preparators, designers, and teachers. Study abroad programs in Europe and Asia and exchange programs with colleges on the East Coast provide Mills students with opportunities to study art in various cultural environments and to enrich their aesthetic understanding. On campus, the Mills College Art Museum provides interested students with experience in all phases of museum work, including curatorial duties, installation, and cataloging. To support students' research interests, the slide library offers more than 130,000 images illustrating arts and cultures worldwide.