The Art History department at the Open University upholds two strong commitments. Firstly, we are committed to producing excellent undergraduate and postgraduate courses, which our students consistently report as excellent in content and approach. Secondly, we are committed to excellence in research, evidenced in our being rated as the top ten departments nationally for our subject area in the last (2008) RAE exercise.
We value our vibrant collective research culture including a growing community of research students and a dynamic programme of collaborations with major UK galleries (including Tate and the V&A). We also organise regular research seminars and study days open to students, researchers and academics. We make these activities available online through the Open Arts Archive.
In teaching we aim to produce courses which are stimulating and which address interesting issues in current art history and visual culture. For example, our third level course on Renaissance art (AA315 Renaissance Art Reconsidered) questions the traditional geographical, subject and social boundaries of this subject – one of the most traditional in the art history discipline – in line with contemporary developments in academic research. Our third level course on modern and contemporary art (AA318 Art of the Twentieth Century) explores issues as diverse as the discourse of the 'primitive', gender, medium-specificity and hybridity, the autonomy of art and cultural globalisation, as they arise from the art itself. Our new second level course, launched in October 2012, A226 Art and its Histories provides a broad introduction to the discipline, and explore a range of art practices from every continent, including art from Europe, America, Australia, Africa and India. We are also directly involved in developing Heritage Studies within the Open University; the interdisciplinary level two course (AD281 Understanding Global Heritage) introduces critical heritage studies, looking at the range of heritage places, practices and objects that we value, both in our own lives and as a heritage for the world.
The departmental blog Art History and Heritage is a forum for reflecting on themes in art history and heritage that catch our attention beyond our teaching and specialist research.