Course Info

BA History of Art and Heritage Management provides a first-class rounded education and excellent intellectual training.

While the primary focus is on the visual arts, the subject also touches on many other traditional humanities disciplines such as literature, history, religion, languages, classics, psychology and philosophy, with which it provides natural subject combinations.

Students acquire skills of critical and historical analysis and the ability to evaluate evidence and present arguments fluently, both orally and in writing.

A pathway to careers in the international art world

Students also study museums and the art market and acquire business and management skills through our unique joint honours with Heritage Management, providing them with a pathway to careers in the international art world and transferable skills applicable in other fields, such as journalism, law and business.

Credit transfer

If you already have a Foundation Degree or Undergraduate Diploma (240 credits, with at least 120 at Second Year Level 5) and wish to continue your studies to complete a BA Honours in Art History (requiring 120 credits at Final Year Level 6), you may apply to Buckingham to study full-time or part-time.

Students who have successfully completed an Undergraduate Certificate (120 credits at First Year Level 4) can also be considered for transfer to the Buckingham BA Honours Programme.

Teaching & Assessment

Quality teaching

We offer high quality, traditional Oxbridge-style teaching, which leads to our degrees being recognised around the world. The standards of degrees and awards are safeguarded by distinguished external examiners – senior academic staff from other universities in the UK – who approve and moderate assessed work.

After Your Course

Graduate employment

Our graduates have gone on to further study at most of the world’s leading universities, including Harvard, London, Oxford and Cambridge and secured jobs in senior positions around the world. Among our alumni we have a graduate who became the head of his country’s civil service and one who became a leading Formula One motor-racing driver. Another secured a position as the Minister of Sabah and one female law graduate became the first British lawyer to become a French Advocate.

Pathways to a career

As well as the wide variety of professional or management careers for which an arts and humanities degree is a useful preparation, art history and heritage can prepare graduates for employment or further academic study or graduate training in areas related to the subjects studied, which can include the art market, curating, museums and heritage organisations, specialist media and publishing, and to areas for which visual understanding is an asset such as in advertising. A knowledge of art history is also useful for conservation training in fine and decorative art and architecture.