Art History and Film & Visual Culture

Art history and film and visual culture is a combination that reflects the breadth of the visual in the contemporary world, extending the traditional concerns of art history into the moving image and the full range of visual media through which culture is now produced, circulated, and consumed. Art history provides the rigorous analytical and historical framework for engaging with the visual arts, developing the skills of visual analysis, historical contextualisation, and theoretical interpretation. Film and visual culture extends these skills into cinema, video, digital media, and the broader landscape of images and visual experience that shapes how we understand ourselves and our world.

At the University of Aberdeen, this four-year programme adds the dimension of art, architecture, and curation to a rigorous training in the history and theory of the moving image in the twenty-first century. You will study across a wide range of media and techniques, developing the critical and analytical skills needed to engage with visual culture in its full diversity, in a university that is highly rated for student satisfaction in art history. The programme includes a year abroad, which provides the experience of studying art and film in an international cultural context.

Graduates from art history and film and visual culture programmes are well placed for careers in galleries, museums, curating, film criticism and journalism, broadcasting, cultural diplomacy, auction houses, heritage organisations, arts administration, publishing, and education. The analytical, research, and communication skills the degree develops are also valued in communications, marketing, and the creative industries more broadly. Many graduates pursue postgraduate study in art history, film studies, curating, cultural studies, or visual arts.