History of Art

Why choose this course?

• Birkbeck is one of the leading universities for the study of the history of art as a culturally and historically engaged discipline. Our teaching staff are internationally recognised experts conducting ground-breaking research in periods from medieval to contemporary.
• You will have the opportunity to take a ten-week supervised work placement in a museum, gallery or archive. Previous placements have been offered at Tate, the British Museum, the Science Museum, Whitechapel Gallery and the Horniman Museum and have included helping design and run school programmes, documenting collections previously uncatalogued, conducting visitor research, and assisting curators in producing exhibitions.
• Your studies will be enriched by museum, gallery and site visits, visiting speakers and screenings, as we make the most of the renowned and incredibly rich art collections, monuments and study facilities in London.
• You will join our vibrant postgraduate research culture studying with a diverse and dynamic student body of all ages and backgrounds.

What you will learn

History of art is a rich and dynamic discipline which combines rigorous investigation of the visual arts with creative exploration of their connections to culture, politics and society. You will study the visual arts and built environment as a central element of human endeavour in a stimulating, broad-ranging and in-depth way.

You will master a wide range of methods and sources, including archives, collections, historical and contemporary texts, and a broad spectrum of artistic media from cathedrals to digital installations. This will give you advanced skills, much desired by many employers, in analysis, argument and communication.

You will also have the chance to follow your interests choosing from a wide range of option modules to explore various media in depth, such as painting, sculpture, print culture, architecture, digital art, photography and performance.

How you will learn

You can study this course full- or part-time. It has an evening timetable with classes taking place in the evening. Classes may be in the form of short lectures, seminar and small-group discussions, or group tasks such as the analysis of texts and visual material. In these we encourage debate enlivened by the diverse perspectives and experience of Birkbeck students, some of whom already have strong professional links with the cultural and heritage sectors.

Option modules may include organised visits to museums and galleries, collections and heritage sites. In your final year, you will devise your own research project for the dissertation, supervised by one of our specialists.