Program Overview

On this degree programme, you’ll learn about the most important periods in the history of European art whilst exploring the arts of other cultures, including art in the ancient world, and contemporary art in India, Asia, Africa and the Americas. You’ll engage with artworks from pre-history right through to the present, and with a wide variety of art forms including painting, sculpture, photography and video art, architecture, and installation and performance art.

In your first year, you’ll establish firm foundations for the study of works of art from a variety of traditions. In your second and third years, you’ll select from a range of optional modules focused on particular periods and addressing specific topics and themes that cut across the history of art and history of art institutions. These may include the relationship between modern art and gender, contemporary art history, the role of the gallery and museum, the fascinating world of medieval life, indigenous art, and the politics of art and art display.

All this results in a degree with incredible breadth and depth. As well as expanding and deepening your knowledge and understanding of art, you’ll cultivate key intellectual and professional skills including the visual analysis of images, critical thinking, and confident communication.

In your second year of study, you’ll have the opportunity to do a placement and apply the skills you are developing through your degree in the working world, whilst developing your knowledge of employment sectors in which you may wish to work in the future.

You’ll have the opportunity to study the world-famous collection of art held in the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. This means you will have access to important artworks from Asia, Africa, the Pacific, the Americas, and Europe. You will be able to study relevant objects first hand, while learning about the processes and politics of collecting. You’ll also be taught by world-leading experts from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, who will encourage you to approach works of art from different perspectives.

This course is delivered by UEA’s world-leading department of Art History and World Art Studies. Our main areas of research are the history of art and architecture in Europe and North America; the arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania and South America; the archaeology and anthropology of art; and museum studies and cultural heritage.

We are part of a close network of internationally-renowned centres for the study and display of art: the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, the Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, and the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures.