Chinese and History of Art

Chinese and history of art is an intellectually distinctive combination that brings together serious language study with one of the richest and most rewarding approaches to the visual world. Chinese is the most widely spoken first language on Earth and one of the most significant for contemporary global affairs, commerce, and culture. History of art provides the frameworks to understand how and why visual objects, from paintings and sculptures to architecture and design, come to look the way they do, and what they tell us about the societies that made them.

Combining the two at a specialist institution creates a particularly coherent degree: Chinese visual culture is itself one of the great traditions in art history, and studying it through language access as well as historical analysis transforms the depth of your understanding.

At the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, this four-year programme develops your Chinese language skills alongside training in art historical analysis across a range of traditions and periods. You will build linguistic proficiency in Chinese from the foundation year through to advanced reading and communication, while also developing the critical and contextual skills that art history demands. SOAS's particular depth of expertise in Asian arts and cultures means that the two disciplines reinforce each other throughout the programme in ways that would not be possible at a more general university.

The foundation year provides a supported transition into degree-level study for students who benefit from building their skills before entering the main programme.

Graduates from this combination go on to work in museums and galleries, arts administration, cultural diplomacy, auction houses and the art market, journalism, publishing, and international business with a Chinese-speaking dimension. Many go on to postgraduate study in Chinese studies, art history, museum studies, or curatorial practice, developing specialist careers in sectors where their particular combination of linguistic and visual knowledge is genuinely distinctive.