This programme is designed to introduce you to a broad range of disciplines and areas of knowledge relating to subjects and periods of the history of collecting and collections. This includes core issues and methodological approaches, such as connoisseurship, taste and the politics of display, key developments in patterns of collecting and viewing, from cabinets of curiosity to contemporary artworks, the impact of travel, and the operations of the market in the transition from private to public collections.
This programme is designed to introduce as great a variety of approaches as possible, while allowing options and specialisms to suit individual preferences. There are opportunities for individual research, participation in a student-organised exhibition and access to work placements in museums, auction houses and cultural institutions. Other courses offered by the Faculty of Arts are available as part of the degree and include advanced IT courses taught by the Humanities Advanced Technology & Information Institute. The whole degree may be structured to reflect your individual interests, culminating in the dissertation, which is written on a subject selected by you in consultation with a tutor.
The programme is intended both for those seeking employment in the art world and for those wishing to pursue further research. The University’s collections, together with civic and national collections, make Glasgow a particularly well-endowed centre for the study of art and design history at postgraduate level.
Content
Two compulsory core courses
* Research training
* Collecting issues
Plus a dissertation.
Some examples of optional courses
* 16th century royal palaces and their collections
* Scientists, antiquarians and collectors
* Collecting and display: viewing art in 18th century China
* James McNeill Whistler: etching and etchers
* A new terrain: women and sculpture in Europe c1780-1901
* Other Europes 1900-1968: design and architecture in Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Poland
* Authentic art work: interpretation, conservation and presentation
* Collecting, conservation and display: 20th century and contemporary art
* Independent study
* Student exhibition
* Work placement.
One of your four courses may be chosen from the following options
* Multimedia analysis and design or 2D digitisation, offered by the Humanities Advanced Technology & Information Institute
* a course offered by the Department of Archaeology such as Material culture in context, The process of artefact studies, Viking and late Norse artefacts or Early medieval artefacts
* an option from elsewhere in the faculty, which must be approved by the programme convener.