The MA (Hons) in Art History will teach you critically and perceptively to assess artworks of all kinds, allowing you to become visually and verbally articulate. The main focus of the course is on the major arts of painting, sculpture and architecture, but it also encompasses applied art, graphic art, performance art and photography.

As part of your degree, you will learn to analyse the style, content, meaning, theory and aesthetics of artworks. You will engage with different critical frameworks that allow you to explore the implicit and explicit ideas behind each work.

Course details

The MA (Hons) in Art History is a four-year course run by the School of Art History. Art history is a well-rounded discipline that embraces aspects of economic, social and political history, languages and literature, philosophy and psychology, and provides relevant contexts and critical approaches with which to analyse works of art.

In your first year, you will cover two main areas of study. The first comprises medieval and Renaissance art in Europe and beyond. It has a particular focus on the social, political and religious conditions under which art was produced, and examines points of contact with the wider world. The second course analyses art and architecture in the 17th and 18th centuries, primarily (but not only) in Europe, addressing technological advances, widening audiences, and processes of colonisation.

In second year, you will take two modules. The first explores the intersection of visual culture with conceptions of modernity, empire and revolutionary resistance in the long 19th century, predominantly but not exclusively in Europe, paying particular attention to the constructs of gender, race and class. The second course expands on the relationship between art and political struggle in the 20th and 21st centuries, examining how practitioners around the globe have contributed to socio-cultural change.