Cử nhân Nghệ thuật (Danh dự) Giám tuyển và Lịch sử nghệ thuật

Year 1

In your first year you'll study a range of modules that will develop your skills in art history and cover a range of approaches to curating art museums. You can also choose to study a language module, several of which are specifically designed for art historians.

With our modules you'll visit works of art and architecture in York and beyond to study them first hand, and you'll explore the material nature of works and learn to describe, analyse and interpret the visual and material qualities of a wide range of media. You'll learn to challenge commonly held assumptions, and develop your skills for literary, critical and rhetorical analysis. You'll be introduced to the history and current practice of art curation. You'll work with case studies and texts and learn about relevant methodologies and conceptual problems, and will critically assess the collection and display of visual objects.

You'll take a selection of modules, examples of which may include:

• Approaches to Curatorial Practice

• Objects in Focus (Curating)

• The Art of Describing 

• The Materials of Art and Architecture 

• Theory for Art Historians

You'll also have a choice to study another module from one of the following examples:

• Transmissions and Connections

• Learn a language - you have the chance to study a general language module, including medieval or classical Latin, Arabic, Chinese, Italian, Modern Greek and many others. You can also study specialist courses for Art Historians that build reading skills in French, Italian or German.

Year 2

In your second year you'll be able to choose from modules across a wide historical, geographical, and theoretical range. The emphasis will be on learning to think about exhibitions and displays.

You'll undertake a curatorial internship which is a placement with an arts institution which allows you to practise the skills you've acquired and to develop your own curatorial interests.

You'll also take part in a group project to plan an exhibition. This module is taught in collaboration with one of our established museum partners, and you'll have a chance to familiarise yourself with their collections and their spaces. You'll focus on a particular display project or exhibition and explore the full process of developing an exhibition, including object selection and arrangement, the production of interpretive texts, catalogue conception, audience analysis, marketing, fundraising and more. You'll experience at first hand how curatorial theory intersects with the practical demands of planning an exhibition.

Core modules

You'll take core modules that develop your curatorial and exhibition skills and knowledge:

• Curatorial Internship

• Group Exhibition Project 

Seminar option modules

You'll also choose seminar modules that allow you to study certain time-periods or types of art in more detail. There will be restrictions on which modules you can choose, to ensure you study a sufficient amount of curatorial material. Modules change to reflect the latest research and developments but will include a range of interesting subjects from the medieval to the contemporary.

You'll take a selection of option modules, examples of which may include:

• Action/Re-action: Live Art, Performance & Participation

• Art in Venice from Bellini to Titian 

• Casts and Cultures: the Crystal Palace, Sydenham 

• Image and Icon: Representing the Sacred in the Early Medieval World 

• Image Controversies and Iconoclasms

• The Italian Avant-Garde

• The Power of the Real in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Painting and Sculpture 

• The Rise of the Print in Europe, 1400-1800 

Year 3

In your third year you'll choose modules that allow you to study a time period or type of art in significant detail. There will be restrictions on which modules you can choose, to ensure you study a sufficient amount of curatorial material. Modules change to reflect the latest research and developments. 

You'll also work on your 7,000-8,000-word dissertation. This will give you a chance to explore an interesting topic in significant detail, and must have a significant curatorial aspect.

Special subject modules

You'll take a selection of special subject modules, examples of which may include:

• Architecture and Politics in Stuart England c.1603-1688

• Art Law for Art Historians

• Illuminating the Bible 1200-1500 

• Innovations in Northern Renaissance Art

• Journeys, Histories, and Methods of Display

• Mirrors & Screens: The World of Andy Warhol

• Monuments of the Islamic World: Innovation and Change from Spain to India

• Stained Glass in the Great Church c.1170-1350

• Victorian Art