Art History and Curating

Art history and curating are disciplines that speak directly to each other. Art history provides the intellectual foundations: the critical and analytical frameworks for understanding how works of art are produced, circulated, interpreted, and valued across different periods and cultures. Curating draws on that historical knowledge while adding the practical and conceptual skills specific to presenting art to audiences, whether in museums, galleries, festivals, or online contexts.

Together they offer a programme that is both intellectually rigorous and professionally relevant to the contemporary art world.

At Manchester Metropolitan University, within the environment of Manchester School of Art, this three-year full-time programme combines art history with a focus on developments since the nineteenth century alongside the essential practical skills and critical perspectives needed by contemporary curators. You will develop close visual analysis, research skills, and art-historical knowledge alongside an understanding of how exhibitions are conceived, designed, and delivered, and of the institutional and social contexts in which curating takes place. Manchester's rich artistic and cultural life, including its major galleries and museums, provides a genuinely distinctive backdrop for this kind of study.

A sandwich year is built into the programme, giving you the opportunity to spend time working in a cultural organisation, developing professional experience and industry contacts that are highly valuable in a competitive sector. Work placements are also integrated throughout the degree.

Graduates of art history and curating programmes move into careers in museums and galleries, arts administration, heritage, auction houses, arts journalism, publishing, education, cultural policy, and the art market. Many also continue to postgraduate study in curating, museum studies, or art history, building towards specialist curatorial or research careers.