伦敦大学沃尔伯格学院

About the Degree

The MA in Art History, Curatorship and Renaissance Culture is offered by the Warburg Institute in collaboration with the National Gallery, London. The programme combines the study of artworks and their cultural contexts with high-level linguistic, archive and research skills for a new generation of academic art historians and museum curators. The art historical and scholarly traditions of the Warburg Institute are linked to the practical experience and skills of the National Gallery to provide an academic programme which will equip students either as academic art historians with serious insight into the behind the scenes workings of a great museum or as curators with the research skills necessary for high-level museum work.

This programme provides a solid grounding in:

• Museum knowledge, which covers aspects of curatorship including the technical examination of paintings, connoisseurship, materials and conservation, attribution, provenance and issues relating to display.
• Art history and Renaissance culture to increase students’ understanding of methods of analysing the subjects of works of art and their knowledge of Renaissance art works and the conditions in which they were commissioned, produced and enjoyed.
• Current scholarship and professional practice in these areas as well as new and emerging areas of research and scholarship.
• The programme is taught through classes and supervision by members of the academic staff of The Warburg Institute and by National Gallery curatorial and archival experts. The teaching staff of The Warburg Institute are leading academics in their field who have published widely and are involved with research related to the topics they teach.

Why study with us?

As a student at the Warburg Institute, you will have access to the best resources for the study of Renaissance art and culture in London. Unparalleled staff contact hours are combined with access to the Warburg Library, with its unique cataloguing system specifically designed to aid research, and the National Gallery’s collection and archives.

Through the Institute’s research projects, fellowship programmes and events, and its informal collegiate atmosphere, students have extensive opportunities for networking with an international community of scholars, which significantly enriches the learning experience and can provide ideal connections for the future careers.

Studying in Bloomsbury at the centre of an academic and cultural hub, students also benefit from visits and training sessions at neighbouring institutions including the British Museum, the Government Art Collection, the Wellcome Trust and the British Library, and further afield the V&A, the Dulwich Picture Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and the Courtauld Gallery.

The Warburg Institute has a range of full fee bursaries available to both home/EU and international students. The Institute also has an excellent record in securing external funding, and is happy to work with prospective students on funding applications.

Degree overview

The MA programme aims to provides mastery in:

• The intellectual discipline of Art History for academic research and museum work, focusing primarily on the period 1300-1700, its objects of study and modes of interpretation
• The intellectual and practical aspects of curatorship, with the opportunity to curate an online exhibition as part of degree coursework
• Renaissance Culture, to enable critical evaluation of artworks and the conditions in which they were commissioned, produced and enjoyed
• Primary source materials in original languages and translation for original research.