History of Art with Gallery and Museum Studies with a Year Abroad

The history of art combined with gallery and museum studies creates one of the most directly vocationally relevant degree combinations available in the arts and humanities, combining the academic discipline of art history with the professional knowledge and practical skills needed to work in the gallery and museum sector. Art history develops your capacity to analyse and interpret visual and material culture, to understand how works of art are produced, circulated, and experienced in different historical and social contexts, and to construct well-evidenced arguments about what art does and means. Gallery and museum studies examines the institutions in which art is displayed and preserved, their histories, their social roles, their curatorial and interpretive practices, and the questions they raise about who gets to tell the story of culture and who is left out.

At the University of East Anglia this four-year full-time programme, which includes a year abroad as a structural element, allows you to explore these questions through first-hand experience of a major art gallery and museum. You will discover the history of art across time and cultures, examining the relationship between culture and society from the past to the present and into the future. The combination of scholarly study and professional engagement with real institutions is central to the programme's character.

You will develop visual analysis skills, art-historical knowledge, research competences, and practical understanding of how galleries and museums operate, including their collections management, educational, and interpretive functions.

Graduates move into careers in museums and galleries, auction houses, heritage management, cultural policy, arts administration, education, publishing, and a range of other roles in the cultural sector. Many continue to postgraduate study in museum studies, art history, or heritage management.