Undergraduate Degrees
Our Focus
The teaching on our undergraduate degrees is focused on modern and contemporary art history and visual cultures, and is theoretical / philosophical in orientation. Visual works and phenomena from earlier historical periods are also considered, but are explored with reference to present-day visual scenarios, practices and concerns.
Our Degrees
For full details of all our undergraduate degrees, and for information on how to apply, please follow the links below.
Our Students
Our students come from a wide range of cultural and academic backgrounds and have diverse interests. Some arrive already having had some schooling in art history, others are new to the subject. Most new students are recent school-leavers, but several are older, bringing with them experience of work and travel. These factors produce an exceptionally rich learning environment. We encourage new students to extend already-existent skills, abilities and enthusiasms. We also encourage students to work collaboratively and to learn from each other.
Undergraduate Degrees
Preparatory Work
All new undergraduate students are asked to read the following books before arrival, and to think about the different approaches to art history / visual culture that are proposed in each case:
E H Gombrich, The Story of Art (1950)
John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972)
Susan Hiller (ed), The Myth of Primitivism (1991)
Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (1990).
New students are also asked to produce a one-page 'visual mapping' of their current relationship to art history and visual culture, based on ideas found in the 'Intuitive Stories' chapter of James Elkins' book Stories of Art (2002).