Picture of BA History of Art students in a classroom
The BA History of Art is a full-time, three-year course which is designed to prepare you for a career in the arts or for further academic study.


You will be assigned a personal tutor who will help you put together a structured and progressive set of course choices in each successive year of the degree. Personal tutors can also discuss assessment procedures with you and provide the first point of contact for academic and personal problems.


FIRST YEAR


The first year of the degree is designed to offer broad coverage of the periods and regions of Western art. You will complete:

Foundation Lecture Course

Two Topic Courses, which have recently included:                           

  • Getting to Grips with Rembrandt
  • Central Italian Renaissance Art in London Collections
  • Victorian Institutions: Sites and Monuments
  • Contemporary Art in London

Language Course
Students usually take beginners’ Italian or intermediate French depending on experience. Other language learning opportunities exist for those who have already reached these levels of competence in French and Italian.


SECOND YEAR


The second year introduces more specialised investigation and enables students to develop critical thinking and extend their detailed knowledge of art historical periods. You will take:


Frameworks for Interpretation: Historiography and Display Lecture Course

One Period Course
The options offered change annually but recently have included:                          

  • Decline and Fall: Art and Transformation in Late Antiquity
  • Art in Venice c. 1420-1510
  • Rococo to Revolution: Art and Society in France c.1715-1790
  • Histories of Twentieth-Century Art: American Art 1945-1972
  • Cathedrals in Context: Religion and the Great Church in England 1170 to 1350

One Theme Course

Texts and Contexts Course, which may include:

  • The Metaphysics of Art History: German art history from Kant to Gombrich
  • Monuments and Memory
  • Man, Nature and the Construction of the Landscape Idea
  • Approaches to the Architecture of Michelangelo
  • Artists’ Writings 1960s to the Present

THIRD YEAR

 

You will take two Special Option courses, which will allow you to engage with materials and methods at an advanced level and prepare you for further study or research. The options offered change annually but recently have included:

  • Art in the Courts of France c. 1340-1420
  • Landscape and Power in Early Modern Europe
  • Angels’ Work: Insular Art from the 7th to the 9th Centuries
  • English Baroque Architecture
  • Race and Representation in British Art c. 1730-1860
  • Picasso
  • Modern and Post-Modern Photography

Detailed information about the aims and objectives of the course can be found in the programme specification below:

PDF icon  BA Programme Specification (currently being updated)