BA (Hons) History of Art

at Goldsmiths University of London

Program structure

Year 1 (credit level 4)

On the BA History of Art you will develop an independent critical involvement with works of art and visual culture. Our first-year modules enable you to examine changing conceptions of art and the artist, historically and also in terms of context, ideas, and kinds of practice.

Your first year will introduce you to history of art as a discipline and engage you in discussion of key aspects of contemporary visual culture – including not just artefacts in museums and art galleries, but also architecture, cityscape and landscape, adverts, TV and film, websites, the body, and street style.

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 will therefore begin your second year with both rich insights from and a comprehensive overview of Department life as a whole.

In the first year, you study the following compulsory modules:
 

Our second and third-year modules are also 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.

Year 2 (credit level 5)

In your second year, you study the following compulsory module:
 

You then study option Modules to the value of 90 credits from an approved list available annually from the Department of Visual Cultures. This currently includes: 

• Beckett and Aesthetics

• Cohabitations/Inhabitations

• Art and Technologies of the Image

• The Fact of Blackness

• Fashion as a Dialectical image

• Ornamentation and Materiality

• Museums, Galleries, Exhibitions

• Popular Modernism

• Patterns of Perception

• Postmodernities

• Radical Imagination & Speculative Voyages

Your fourth option module could be a History of Art module or a Related Study module from another department within Goldsmiths.

Year 3 (credit level 6)

You take two History of Art special subjects and a third module which may be a further History of Art special subject or an option module or a Related Study. You also write an 8,000 – 10,000-word Dissertation on a topic of your own choice supervised by a tutor. Special Subjects include: 
 

We accept the following qualifications:

• A-level: BBB

• BTEC: DDM

• International Baccalaureate: 33 points overall with Three HL subjects at 655

• Access: Pass with 45 Level 3 credits including 30 Distinctions and a number of merits/passes in subject-specific modules

• Scottish qualifications: BBBBC (Higher) or BBC (Advanced Higher)

• European Baccalaureate: 75%, you also need to show an interest in and aptitude for Art History

• Irish Leaving Certificate: H2 H2 H2 H2

If English isn’t your first language, you will need an IELTS score (or equivalent English language qualification) of 6.0 with a 6.0 in writing and no element lower than 5.5 to study this programme. If you need assistance with your English language, we offer a range of courses that can help prepare you for degree-level study.

Annual tuition fees

These are the fees for students starting their programme in the 2022/2023 academic year.

From August 2021 EU/EEA/Swiss nationals will no longer be eligible for 'Home' fee status. EU/EEA/Swiss nationals will be classified as 'International' for fee purposes.

• Home - full-time: £9250

• International - full-time: £17890

Career Opportunity

These skills are all appropriate to careers in museums and galleries as administrators or curators, as artists or art historians/ theoreticians, in journalism and the media, teaching and research and the commercial world. Indeed, many of our alumni are active in the contemporary art world, whether working for major art and cultural institutions, or having set up cultural initiatives of their own.