History of Art

Why study BA History of Art at Goldsmiths
Investigate modern and contemporary art, art theory and visual culture from around the world, and from a fresh perspective.

• This degree encourages you to develop an independent critical involvement with works of art and visual culture. You'll examine changing historical conceptions of art and the artist, and explore the visual arts in their wider cultural and political contexts.

• We'll explore visual culture in all forms to broaden your outlook. You’ll not only examine the kinds of artefacts you might see in museums and art galleries, but also those that make up our everyday environment: like architecture, city and landscapes, adverts, TV and film, websites, the body, and street style.

• You'll study history of art from a fresh perspective, investigating key areas of debate rather than traditional chronology.

• You’ll study in one of the world's best universities for art and design (QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025) and you'll be based in London, which means you'll be able to take advantage of the many galleries, art spaces, museums, cultural facilities and specialist libraries the city has to offer.

• You’ll get the chance to put theory into practice with a work placement module, where you could gain experience at a public institution such as Hackney Museum or the Live Art Development Agency.

• Many of our recent graduates are now working as curators and exhibition managers with employers including Tate Modern, the V&A Museum and Edinburgh Castle, while others enter creative fields such as journalism and marketing.

Course Modules

Year 1 (credit level 4)
In your first year you'll examine changing conceptions of art and the artist, historically and also in terms of context, ideas, and kinds of practice.

You will also be introduced to history of art as a discipline and will engage in discussion of key aspects of contemporary visual culture.

Each of our first-year modules is taught by a team of four or five different teachers from the permanent faculty. Our approach to learning, teaching and research is exploratory, innovative and rigorous. In this way, first-year students soon get to know many of the department’s core academic staff.

You'll take the following compulsory modules:

• Modernities

• Seeing and Showing

• Space and Time

• Beyond Boundaries

Year 2 (credit level 5)
You will take the following compulsory modules:

• Contemporaneities

• The Goldsmiths Elective

• Situated Knowledges in Visual Cultures

Option modules
You also choose 2 or 3 option modules to the value of 45 credits from an approved list available annually in Visual Cultures.

Second and third-year modules are thematic in content, and the themes relate to five pathways running through the programme:

Art and ideas
Space and place
The Curatorial
Sound and image
Embodiment

Individual modules are identified with one or more of these pathways, to help you in defining your special areas of interest as you proceed.

Recent examples of option modules include:

• Beckett & Aesthetics: Bodies and Identity

• Cohabitations

• Inhabitations

• The Fact of Blackness I

• Fashion as Dream Image

• Museums, Galleries, Exhibitions

• Popular Modernism

• Patterns of Perception

• The Goldsmiths Project

Year 3 (credit level 6)
In your third year, you will take the following compulsory module:
Expanded Practices in Visual Cultures

Option modules
You will also take 2 to 4 option modules (60 credits), chosen from an approved list that is available annually in Visual Cultures.

One of the optional modules you may choose is the 'Visual Cultures as Public Practice' module. During this module, you will have the opportunity to link your studies to one of many interesting public institutions. Your research project could be based at the V&A, The Live Art Development Agency, Iniva, Hackney Museum, the Zoo, amongst many others.

Recent examples of option modules include:

• Animating Architecture

• Archive and Spectacle

• Film Fables

• Documentary Lives

• Philosophy and...

• Sexual Poetics

• The Truth in Painting

• Counter Forensics

• Research Architecture

• Visual Cultures as Public Practice

Please note that due to staff research commitments not all of the modules may be available every year.