History of Art with Curating

The MA History of Art with Curating is ideal if you wish to combine learning the practical skills required in the museum workplace with study of the rich and dynamic discipline of the history of art. It will give you a solid grasp of the key issues and skills involved in curating practice and an insight into the different working practices of various museums and galleries.

During an intensive week studying current issues and practices in curating you will meet curators and collections managers in London's thriving museum, galleries and archives sector, and engage in hands-on activities including documentation, cataloguing and issuing loan requests.

You will also have the opportunity to apply for a 10-week supervised work placement in a museum, gallery or archive. Previous work placements have been offered at the Tate, British Museum, Whitechapel Gallery and Horniman Museum. Past students have documented collections that were previously uncatalogued, helped design and run schools programmes, conducted visitor research and assisted curators in producing exhibitions.

As well as regular gallery and museum visits, we also offer an exciting study trip abroad every spring.

This course is part of our new Birkbeck Flexible Master’s UK, which gives you the choice of how you want to study - on campus, online or via flexible learning, which combines both. NB: teaching slots are scheduled in UK time. Note that this also applies to the intensive Curating module which is taught over a one-week period in the spring term between 10am and 5pm each day. This module gives you the opportunity to hear from a variety of leading professional curators during live online sessions.

Highlights

Birkbeck was ranked as one of the top four universities in the UK for its Art and Design research in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework.

Birkbeck has an international reputation for its innovative approaches to the history of art, visual culture and museum studies, and attracts a rich programme of visiting scholars and practitioners. We are home to the History and Theory of Photography Research Centre, the Architecture, Space and Society Centre, the Centre for Museum Cultures and the Vasari Research Centre. You will also have access to the Centre for Film and Visual Media. We have state-of-the art cinema and exhibition spaces, all housed in a historic building that was a former home to key members of the Bloomsbury Group, including the author Virginia Woolf and the artist Vanessa Bell. Birkbeck Library has an extensive collection of books and journals in museum studies and history of art.

Close to our location in Bloomsbury in central London, you can explore some of the world's best architecture, galleries and museums, collections and art spaces, such as the British Library, British Museum, Sir John Soane's Museum, Foundling Museum, Wellcome Gallery, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Tate Britain, Tate Modern and V&A.

We host a range of events including information evenings for prospective students; the annual Murray Lecture; exhibitions and displays at Birkbeck's Peltz Gallery, and events at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. Find out more about our staff and student activities on the Birkbeck History of Art blog.

Study trips in the last few years include visits to Florence, Paris, Venice, Vienna, Rome, Berlin and Moscow.

Careers and employability

Graduates can pursue career paths in the creative arts, media and education. Possible professions include:

museum/gallery curator

arts administrator

advertising account executive

community arts worker

multimedia specialist

higher education lecturer.