Giulio Carlo Argan (17 May 1909 – 12 November 1992) was an Italian art historian, critic and politician.

In the 1930 he worked for the National Antiquity and Arts Directorate, first in Turin and then in Modena and Rome, where he collaborated to the creation of the Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro and directed the magazine Le Arti.

His career was boosted by his friendship with the Fascist leader Cesare Maria De Vecchi, then national Minister of Education.

[citation needed] In 1938 he published a manual of art for high schools, while in the 1940s he collaborated to the magazine Primato, founded and directed by Giuseppe Bottai, another Fascist gerarca.

Argan co-founded the publishing house Il Saggiatore and he was a member of the Superior Council of Antiquities and Fine Arts (predecessor of the Ministry of Culture), in which he remained until 1974.