Introduction to Art History
Art History at the University of Melbourne is the premier provider of art historical scholarship in Australia, and was the first to be established, being founded in 1946. The program is taught by distinguished staff who excel in the areas of:
- Renaissance, Baroque, eighteenth and nineteenth-century European art
- modernism and postmodernism
- Indigenous Australian art
- colonial, modernist and postcolonial Australian art
- Asian art
- Medieval art
- contemporary Australian and international art.
Art History offers a full range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, including a groundbreaking coursework Master in Art Curatorship. We offer research Masters and PhD courses in which you can explore your own specialised areas of research. A full range of graduate and postgraduate certificates and diplomas make it possible to achieve your career goals regardless of your past academic experience.
Thematic and interdisciplinary subjects deal with the theories of art history, architecture, garden design, art and the market, prints, the history and theory of art conservation, postcolonial and crosscultural art, biennales and triennales, and connoisseurship. In addition to subjects taught at the Parkville campus, a number of travel subjects are taught on-site in New York, Rome, and Central Australia in the summer or winter semesters.
The Art History program has close ties with some of the most important collections of art in Australia and overseas, including the Guggenheim, the British Museum, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Ian Potter Museum of Art. World-renowned experts in the field are regularly featured in the School's public lecture series. In the field of Art History, the school is affiliated with the Ian Potter Museum of Art and the Fine Arts Network (FAN) and collaborates with them on a variety of events and lectures.
Resources include teaching rooms equipped with computerised audio-visual and video technology, and a collection of over 160,000 slides. With a degree in art history, graduates are prepared for a wide range of employment possibilities.
Graduates include professors and lecturers in art history, museum directors and curators in Australia and abroad, commercial gallery directors, conservators, interpreters, cultural advisers, teachers, journalists, art dealers, antiquarian book dealers, as well as many other positions in the public sector.