History of Art and Architecture (Graduate Certificate) - 2013/2014 entry

This intensive one-year programme offers you the opportunity to develop your understanding of the history of art and architecture. You will learn to critically analyse and interpret art objects and buildings, and will engage with the concepts, values and debates that inform the study and practice of the history of art.

If you want to study history of art, or a similar course, at Master's level (either at Birkbeck or elsewhere) but have a first degree in another subject, then this programme can be used as a conversion course. You will acquire and develop skills and knowledge of the discipline up to final-year undergraduate level. 

If you are not intending to progress onto an MA, the programme will allow you to continue your exploration of the history of art and architecture at a higher level. 

• Prepares you for entry to Birkbeck's MA History of Art, MA Museum Cultures and other Master's programmes offered by the School of Arts.
• Museum and site visits form a regular feature of the course.
• Tutors have a first-class reputation for teaching and learning; and their teaching is informed by their research.

Core module (autumn term)

You start with the core module, which introduces you to the skills and methodologies used in the contemporary study of art history. It will equip you with the practical skills and conceptual tools, that you will use as you progress in your studies.

Option module (spring term)

You will then take one option module, which allows you to follow specific interests and areas of research. These may include:

• Northern Lights: Scandinavian Art and Design: examines how the architects, designers and artists of Scandinavia responded to the challenges of a changing world through the first half of the twentieth century. This period saw international currents mixing with local concerns to produce distinct art and design cultures in the region. Engaging with ideas of geography, nationalism, art and society and the modernist project, we will look at the cultural transformation of the region and the international reception of Scandinavian Modernism.
• Rethinking the Northern Renaissance: analyses the shifting conception of the ‘Renaissance’ over the last 500 years and, more specifically, the various attempts to apply it to the art and architecture produced in northern Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. From the often unacknowledged influence of Flemish art on that of Italy in the fifteenth century, to the classicism of Dürer and others in the sixteenth century, we will examine the constructions placed upon this material by art historians from Vasari to Panofsky and up to the present day.
• Modernisms in Central Europe: examines how architects, designers and city planners across the Austro-Hungarian monarchy developed various approaches to the challenges of modernity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We will look at Vienna, Krakow, Budapest, Prague and Triest and focus on nationalism, architectural language and competing modernisms.
• Dissertation (spring and summer terms)

You will develop your independent research skills through a 7000-word dissertation on a topic of your choice, supervised by a member of staff.

You will have access to the Birkbeck Library. Our location in Bloomsbury gives you easy access to specialist libraries of the University of London, including the Senate House Library, but also to a wide range of art institutions in central London, and to their collections and temporary exhibitions – from the British Museum and the National Gallery, to the Courtauld Institute of Art and the Institute of Contemporary Arts.

Find out more about our world-class research resources, as well as our specialist resources.

Successful completion with Merit guarantees you a place on the MA History of Art. If you are in this position, you do not need to provide an admissions exercise.

Successful completion will also guarantee an admission interview to Birkbeck's MA Museum Cultures and MA Film, Television and Screen Media.

Graduates go on to careers in museum and gallery administration, in auction houses, as curators, or as researchers and journalists.

• We suggest you apply as early as possible.