Art History and Visual Culture BA(Hons)

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Top reasons to choose this course

• Staff include academics who develop leading research on the museums and heritage sector as part of the Centre for Design History
• Opportunity to take a second-year placement 
• Access to internationally important collections including the Royal Pavilion and Museum’s collections of decorative art, world art and natural history, and University of Brighton-held collections relating to design and screen history and historic dress.
• At the end of your degree, you will exhibit your dissertation with an accompanying poster in the annual graduate show

• As a university we offer excellent resources including the Design lab, a space housing our extensive collection of historic dress and textiles, the Design Archives, St Peters House Special Collection and Screen Archive South East
• Off-site study visits and hands-on sessions.
• Join a vibrant community, featuring visiting researchers and practitioners, reading groups, lectures and workshops
• The specialist course team have research expertise on the Middle East, North Africa, South and East Asia, North America and Britain.

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Year 1

Our Art History and Visual Culture and Fashion and Design History students share some of their studies throughout their course, including a shared first year, so you’ll explore modules with a wide group of students. From year 2 you’ll be in a great position to specialise in your chosen subjects and to choose option modules to focus on the topics that interest you most.

In the first year you will learn about how the movement of people, images, materials and ideas has had a profound impact on the production, re-production and appropriation of art and visual culture. You will study the various ways in which artists and practitioners create works in relation to both the local and global context, improving our understanding of the social and cultural affairs of the time.

Most of your learning will take place in small groups. You will be introduced to essential study skills and tools and familiarise yourself with different types of assessments, including essays, presentations, displays, posters and group projects.

Modules

• Local and Global: Concepts and Ideas in Cross-cultural Histories of Art and Design, Fashion and Visual Culture

  This module introduces key concepts of creative encounters and exchanges across cultures in the history of art and design, fashion and visual culture. You will learn about the ways in which the movement of people, materials and ideas across geographies, spaces and periods have an impact on the production, reproduction and appropriation of art and design.

• Local and Global: Themes and Topics in Cross-cultural Histories of Art and Design, Fashion and Visual Culture

  This module builds on Local and Global: Concepts and Ideas in Cross Cultural Histories of Art and Design and introduces you to key themes and topics on global histories of art, design, fashion and visual culture. You will explore debates on collecting, exhibitions and displays, and develop an understanding of colonial, postcolonial histories and theories through object and image studies.

• Art and Design History in Brighton: Places and Processes

  In this module you will explore aspects of Brighton and Hove that are significant to the history of art and design locally, and in some cases more broadly, through the introduction of key sites, themes and resources, for example, the Royal Pavilion and Museums; the historical development of local identities in subcultures and sexualities; and Brighton on film. These topics are complemented by a seminar series that will equip you with the skills and tools needed to study history of art and design at degree level.

• Material Matters

  Material Matters is an opportunity to explore the characteristics, histories and values associated with different types of materials used in the creation of studio-produced or manufactured objects. You will develop an appreciation of the qualities of different materials and the cultural and environmental implications of their use. You’ll have an opportunity to focus on particular types of materials, such as cotton in the creation of clothing; nitrate in the use of photography and film; and clay and porcelain in the production of domestic kitchenware. The module also introduces the UN Sustainable Development Goal for Responsible Production and Consumption (SDG12).

• Artist, Designer and the Prosumer: Theories and Debates

  This module introduces concepts and trans-historical studies in art and design. You will explore key historical and theoretical ideas and approaches in art, design, fashion and visual culture, such as: the relationship between the artist’s life and the artwork; art, craft and activism; designer and modernity; postmodern portrait of the artist/designer; black identity; and the art historical myths of genius artist.

• Artist, Designer and the Prosumer: Approaches and Practices

  This module builds on Artist, Designer and the Prosumer: Theories and Debates. You will develop your understanding of key theories and debates through the detailed study of different approaches and practices in art and design. The topics cover key historical and contemporary practices and approaches in art, design, fashion and visual culture, such as: artist curator, cultures of craft, professionalisation, feminist art, DIY fashion and the photographer and the prosumer. You will choose case studies to be explored in weekly workshops.

Our courses are reviewed and enhanced on an ongoing basis in order to make sure that what you learn with us is relevant and that your course enables you to develop appropriate skills. When you apply to study with us, we will inform you of any new developments in your chosen programme through Student View.

Year 2 

In year 2 you will develop your core knowledge of art history, theory and visual culture through course-specific modules, expanding your own specialist area of interest, and will be able to choose from option modules, including a creative option. You will also have the opportunity to spend the first semester of your second year at the University of Oslo.

In the second semester, your placement module will give you the chance to gain professional experience in a museum, gallery or other creative industry. Previous work placement destinations include: Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, Design Archives, Worthing Museum, Ditchling Arts and Crafts Museum, Fabrica Contemporary Art Gallery, The Keep Archives, Phoenix Gallery. The University will cover your travel costs on public transport to your placement location.

During your Art History and Visual Culture degree you will go on field trips in and beyond Brighton to museums, heritage sites, art and culture centres and picture archives. Social activities that are relevant to your course, such as film screenings, reading groups and creative circles, will also enhance your learning experience.

Modules

Core modules

• Spaces and Bodies

  This module will develop your knowledge of key concepts and theories relating to the human body and the built environment that inform debates on spaces and bodies in art history, visual culture, fashion and design history. You will explore topics including public and private spaces; diaspora and migration; appearance and beauty; ableism and disability; and performance and performativity.

• Gender and Sexuality in Art and Visual Culture

  This module introduces how various aspects of gender and sexuality have impacted art and visual culture from the 1850s to the present day. It provides an opportunity to explore the way artists, creative practitioners, art and cultural historians and curators have worked with those ideas to create artworks, images and exhibitions that challenge the traditional conceptions of gender and sexuality.

• Constructing Histories: Research Methods and Professional Practice in History of Art and Design

  This module prepares you for your final year dissertation. It introduces resources, analytical tools, methods and critical approaches appropriate for independent research and professional practices. Site visits to archives, libraries and museums will introduce you to primary resources and their interpretation, as well as the practices of professions associated with these sites.

• Art, Visual Culture and Ecology

  Art, Visual Culture and Ecology explores the relationship between humans and other life forms, nature and landscape through the practices of visual arts and culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It provides an opportunity to explore how environmental transformation and crisis, changing relations between nature, culture and society, and different definitions of environment have influenced aesthetic concerns at key moments.

Options*

• Reconstruct, Recreate, Remake

  Reconstruct, Recreate, Remake provides an understanding of historical dress and garment construction, including their critical and historical contexts. You’ll look at the construction and materials of historical dress as a practice, alongside methods of critical examination. The module draws on local collections – such as the University of Brighton Dress and Textile History Teaching Collection and the Special Collections at St Peters House Library – and specialist expertise. It culminates with you recreating an item of historical dress.

• Understanding Exhibitions and Creating Displays

  This module examines the critical contexts for contemporary and historical exhibition making as well as the practical requirements and professional expectations of the form. It draws on local collections, such as the Special Collections at St Peters House Library and the Teaching Collection, and specialist expertise from across academic, curatorial and library staff. The module culminates in small group public displays at sites across campus.

• Staging and Screening Fashion and Design

  This option offers a specialist focus on the staging and screening of fashion and design in different geographical locations in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries and incorporates theoretical ideas, contextual research and primary sources. You will examine a range of objects, images and texts related to stage and film productions to explore issues of performance, race, gender and class.

• Behind the Scenes: Placements in Arts and Heritage

  This module is based on a placement in local museums, galleries, archives, heritage organisations or creative services. It provides experience and insight into arts and heritage working practices if you are considering the pursuit of a career in this field and wish to deepen your understanding of cultural institutions and agencies.

• I Click Therefore I Am: Self and Selfies

  Digital handheld cameras and the selfies they produce have become a defining form of visual culture in the twenty-first century and in this module you will ask questions about the production and circulation of these self-portraits. You will read texts that analyse different aspects of selfie culture in the present and examine how these arguments can be developed in relation to a variety of photographic forms from the nineteenth century to the present.

• Modernism in Asia

  This module investigates the major players in Asian Modernist art and design, their practices and networks. It examines the ways in which Asian artists and designers have understood, appropriated and adapted ideas of modernism and the ways in which they manifested these visually and materially. You will compare the similarities and differences in the development of modernism in each locale, considering distinctive historical, social and political contexts in the 20th century.

• Cold War Cultures: Art, Design and Fashion 1946–1989

  The ideological conflict known as the Cold War was reflected in, and partly fought through, culture. In this module, you’ll investigate how design, fashion, the fine arts, exhibitions, consumer culture, popular culture, film and architecture functioned in the Cold War. You will explore the social and political aspects of cultural forms both within and between the blocs dominated by the Soviet Union and USA and from wider global viewpoints.

• Museums, Material Culture, Representation

  This module offers a specialist focus on the history and contemporary practice of museums, with an emphasis on exploring the complex dynamics between images, objects, institutions and texts. Museums, Material Culture, Representation will focus on the contentious and revolutionary display and interpretation of world cultures since the 1980s and into the future.

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Placements

The optional placement in year 2 enables you to work with artefacts in the context of an archive, museum or public collections and gain valuable, relevant experience.

You will work closely with professionals on focused tasks including curating, cataloguing, collections management, publications and other areas of cultural practice. 

The placement option module provides direct experience and insight into aspects of museum, gallery and archival working practices, deepening your understanding of cultural institutions.

It also enables you to explore career options and make contacts as well as providing topics for final year research projects.

Sally Lawrence on her placement at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft

How was your placement arranged?
There was an option module which allowed students to undertake a placement and then reflect on this in the form of an essay, a log book and a presentation. Everything was arranged by tutors but we were consulted if travel was involved.

What kind of things did you get to do?
I spent time with several members of staff including the director, curator, general manager, communications manager and the volunteer coordinator. I was allowed to sit in on many meetings, including internal staff meetings, meetings with guest curators and possible event partners. I spent some time in the collection store learning about collection maintenance, storage and ethical disposal. I also helped to update and digitalise loan records. I spent a lot of time researching existing visitor types and exploring ways in which to boost visitor numbers, whilst also encouraging a more diverse range of people to visit the museum.

Did you enjoy it?
I found it to be a very enriching and pleasant experience. The staff were very welcoming, friendly and grateful for my help too.

Has it led to any other opportunities?
This real-world experience has enhanced my subsequent essays and presentations regarding museum practice. I chose to stay on as a volunteer and this allowed me access to private viewings, as well volunteer specific talks from guest curators.

What would you like to do when you graduate?
I have applied to stay on at Brighton to do the MA in Curating Collections and Heritage. After that I would like to go into curating. My placement certainly played a part in this decision.

Final year

The final year sees you execute projects as an independent researcher. You will carry out ambitious research projects, including your own dissertation, team projects and visual displays, which will be showcased in the high-profile Graduate Show. In these projects you will be closely supported by your tutors and peers. Also in your final year, you will delve into the advanced theories and debates surrounding art and visual culture.

Modules

Core modules

• Art and Visual Culture in Communities

  This module explores the role art, heritage practices, digital cultures and visual culture play in creating relationships in communities, responding to the UN Sustainable Goal of making communities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. It provides an opportunity to explore how artists, curators and cultural actors can work with diverse communities to navigate questions of social inclusivity, preservation of history, cultural and political citizenship.

• Professional Paths in Art and Design History

  This module introduces a number of contemporary professional paths in art, design, culture and heritage. You will research career possibilities and trajectories, contextualising these within wider historical and theoretical frameworks. Through a live brief, online reporting and final presentation, you’ll explore critical and practical contexts for History of Art and Design at work and reflect on professional requirements of the discipline in relation to your skills.

• Communicating Research

  This module gives you an opportunity to present and be assessed on dissertation research in different contexts, including an oral and visual presentation of research-in-progress to peers, and a visual display of research which will be exhibited publicly as part of the annual degree show. This will facilitate and develop your ability to communicate dissertation research to different audiences.

• Dissertation in History of Art and Design

  The dissertation is a substantial piece of self-selected and self-directed research supported by a tutor. Your in-depth research will draw on a range of material, textual and visual sources unique to your own project. These may include collections, objects and images from around the corner or around the world. Your written work should reflect your abilities in task-setting, independent study, historical or visual enquiry and problem-solving.

Options*

• Participation, Performance and Politics

  In this specialist module you will study participation, performance and political practices within both historic and contemporary art, including activist art and visual activism. It will provide you with the tools to independently explore a specialism within your subject area and give you confidence in identifying and applying appropriate research processes to understand new topics.

• The Past in the Present: Vintage, Retro, Revival

  Examining key concepts such as nostalgia, authenticity and heritage, this module focuses on a range of examples across art and design, from vintage dressing and retro design to the renaissance in vintage technology and the readoption of outmoded processes in contemporary photography. You’ll use local sites and current examples as case studies to examine the reinterpretation and commodification of historical forms and explore the role of imagined pasts and projected memories in popular culture.

• Fashion Contexts

  In this module you will explore and critically analyse influences on Western fashion and dress since the 18th century. You’ll look at the ways in which rural and peasant styles, historical dress and ‘exotic,’ non-Euro-American cultures have all been appropriated and exploited by designers and wearers and investigate these multiple inspirations and contexts, considering dress from a broad cultural perspective.

• Contemporary Art and Design in Asia

  You will undertake a themed study and critical analysis of contemporary of art and design in Asia during this module, considering the critical concepts and approaches related to the study of contemporary Asian art. Current academic debates on modernity, nation, gender, tradition and authenticity, hybridity, globalisation and transnationality will be explored to interpret and evaluate contemporary art and design practices in Asia.

• Making the Modern Home: Design, Domesticity and Discourse

  This module introduces key interpretive methods for understanding the design, representation and experience of the home and domestic interior as created by professionals and amateurs alike. Theories of domesticity, gendered space, everyday and ideal homes, and experimental living will be examined from 1870 to the present day in Europe, the USA and beyond.

*Option modules are indicative and may change, depending on timetabling and staff availability.

Meet the team

The University of Brighton was one of the founding institutions for research in design history and our teaching team are world authorities in areas including art, design and dress history and the culture of photography. These research interests inform their teaching.

Dr Ceren Özpınar, course leader

Dr Ceren Özpınar is a historian specialising in art, visual culture, historiography and exhibitions in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Her research focuses on the relationship between gender, identity and art since 1960, with a special focus on Turkey and the Middle East. Ceren has taught in the areas of art and cultural history, critical studies, art management and visual culture since 2008. Read Ceren’s full research profile.

Other staff who teach on the course include:

• Dr Eliza Tan
• Dr Harriet Atkinson
• Dr Lara Perry
• Dr Yunah Lee
• Dr Charlotte Nicklas
• Professor Annebella Pollen
• Dr Megha Rajguru.

Read a Q+A with Dr Eliza Tan about her career journey.

Lab facilities

Mithras House is home to all our School of Humanities and Social Science courses. It has a series of ‘labs’, which may be used for teaching on your course or in your independent research work.

Design lab
A space housing our extensive collection of historic dress and textiles, which are used in some teaching on our History of Art and Design courses. It has the space and equipment to work on textile projects. Displays created by students on these programmes are on view in the social spaces of the building.

Life lab
A comfortable space with lounge furniture intended for qualitative research with larger groups. Due to its relaxed layout and naturalistic environment, the space is suited to research using focus groups, research using observation-based methods and child research.

City lab
A space designed for collaborative student learning. It is used by students and staff involved in the university’s Global Challenges programme, our collective mission to contribute towards solutions to tackling the pressing issues facing our world.

Stats lab
A specialist workspace with computing equipment for statistical analysis and projects involving video and audio editing software. Accessible as a study space to students on psychology courses as well as students studying courses involving video and audio recording and editing, the lab contains eight soundproof booths.

VR and eye-tracking lab
This lab is used for psychological research, eye-tracking and virtual reality research.

You will also benefit from: 

• world-class Design Archives

• St Peters House Special Collection which contains rare, valuable and delicate books, illustrated books, artist books and handmade items

• Screen Archive South East – a moving image archive.

In addition, the university has close relationships with local festivals and organisations such as Cinecity, the Brighton Photo Biennial, the Brighton Festival, Brighton Festival Fringe, Brighton Digital Festival, Fabrica and Lighthouse. These connections provide a range of opportunities for students. 

Student work 

View catalogues from previous years on Issuu.

Summer shows 2024

Course fees

The fees listed here are for the first year of full-time study if you start your course in the academic year 2025–26.

You will pay fees for each year of your course. Some fees may increase each year.

UK undergraduate and some postgraduate fees are regulated by the UK government and increases will not be more than the maximum amount allowed. Course fees that are not regulated may increase each year by up to 5% or RPI (whichever is higher).

If you are studying part-time your fee will usually be calculated based on the number of modules that you take.

Find out more

• Brighton Boost – cost of living help for our new undergrad students. Find out about how we can help with your study, accommodation or travel costs and more...
• Fees, bursaries, scholarships and government funding info for UK and international undergraduate students
• Student finance and budgeting while studying
• Read our student contract and tuition fee policy (pdf) for more on University of Brighton tuition fees.

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