Art History with Foundation Year

Art history is the discipline that examines how visual works, including paintings, sculpture, architecture, photography, design, and other material artefacts, are made, what they mean, and how our understanding of them changes over time. It is a discipline that sits comfortably between history, philosophy, and cultural studies, asking not just what objects look like but how they function as evidence of the societies that produced them and the people who have used and interpreted them since. Studying art history at Birkbeck means engaging with one of the world's greatest concentrations of art collections, monuments, and cultural institutions, which are woven into the teaching throughout.

At Birkbeck, which has a long tradition of high-quality, accessible university education in London, this four-year programme includes a foundation year that provides additional preparation before the main degree begins. You will study the visual arts from antiquity to the present day, developing the analytical vocabulary to describe and interpret works across different media, periods, and cultural contexts. London's extraordinary cultural geography is explicitly used as a resource: visits to galleries, museums, and historic buildings are integral to the learning experience, and the city itself becomes a kind of living syllabus.

The teaching is research-led, drawing on the expertise of scholars who are actively contributing to the field.

Graduates from art history programmes work in museums and galleries, auction houses, heritage organisations, arts journalism and publishing, cultural policy, education, and the commercial art world. The combination of visual literacy, historical analysis, and written communication that art history develops is also valued in many broader professional contexts. Many graduates continue to postgraduate study in art history, curatorial practice, or museum studies.