Why Art History?
There are many reasons why you might be thinking about studying Art History. Perhaps you enjoy looking at art, or you feel that your own creative work would benefit from a deeper knowledge of great artists and architects of the past. The study of art history contributes more generally to our understanding of the many non-verbal ways in which people have made sense of their surroundings. Because of this, the visually trained art historian has a particular role to play in today’s society. We are living in a world that is saturated with images to an unprecedented degree. We need visually literate people, able to engage with the pictorial rhetoric that underlines the proliferation of images, from attention-grabbing advertisements to the sensational presentation of news items. To engage effectively with such an environment requires a knowledge of past and present visual creations and art history is the pre-eminent discipline to provide this.
