Art History with Curating with Foundation Year

Art history examines the visual arts as one of the most important expressions of human culture, asking how images, objects, and spaces carry meaning and how they have been made, received, and understood across different periods and societies. Combining this with curating adds a professional dimension: curating is the practice of selecting, interpreting, and presenting works of art to audiences, and it sits at the heart of how museums, galleries, and cultural organisations bring art and ideas to the public. Together, the two elements provide both the critical understanding of art and the practical skills needed to work in the cultural sector.

This four-year full-time BA at Birkbeck College includes a foundation year and is set within London's extraordinary concentration of art collections, monuments, and cultural institutions, all of which form an extended classroom for the programme. You will study the visual arts as a central element of human endeavour, developing skills in formal analysis, historical research, and critical writing while also building professional competencies in curating and the display of art. Birkbeck's own Peltz Gallery and the teaching of world-leading scholars give the programme a distinctive combination of scholarly depth and practical orientation.

A typical entry tariff of 88 points applies.

Graduates from art history with curating programmes work in museums, galleries, auction houses, arts organisations, heritage bodies, cultural consultancies, and publishing. Many go on to curatorial assistant or assistant curator roles in major cultural institutions, while others move into education, arts administration, arts journalism, or cultural policy. Postgraduate study in art history, curatorial practice, museum studies, or cultural management is a natural continuation for those wishing to develop specialist professional credentials.