Art History

Art history is the study of visual art, architecture, and material culture across time and across the world. It asks how images and objects are made and what they mean, how they function within the societies that produce and receive them, and how critical and theoretical frameworks help us understand the relationships between art, politics, power, and identity. It is a discipline that trains precise visual attention alongside the ability to construct well-grounded interpretive arguments, and that moves naturally between close looking at individual works and wide-angle analysis of cultural and historical patterns.

The four-year full-time Art History programme at the University of Aberdeen encompasses the study of art, architecture, and curation across various media and techniques. The department's research-led teaching situates European art in its global connectedness and its full historical complexity, while practical engagement with artworks beyond the classroom develops vocational and transferable skills alongside your academic development. You will study at a university with over five hundred years of social and artistic development, and the department is recognised for high levels of student satisfaction.

A year abroad gives you the opportunity to study art history in a different institutional and cultural context, enriching your critical perspectives and your engagement with collections and sites beyond the UK.

With a typical entry tariff of 136 points, the programme is accessible to a wide range of students who bring visual curiosity and intellectual engagement. Graduates from art history programmes work in museums and galleries, auction houses, arts administration, arts journalism and criticism, heritage management, curating, publishing, and the commercial art world, as well as in a wide range of roles where the analytical and communication skills the discipline develops are valued. Many pursue postgraduate study in art history, curating, or museum studies.