Art History courses online and in London

Explore the richness of Italian Renaissance art (1400-1600) in this six-session course, with visits to London’s collections, including the National Gallery, the V&A, the Wallace Collection, and the Courtauld Gallery. Alongside masterpieces by Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Titian, participants will encounter lesser-known works that illuminate everyday life, devotional practices, and the social and political world of the period. Direct engagement with these objects encourages reflection on their creation, meaning, and original context.

Discover Covent Garden when it was the centre for artists to live, socialise and practice their profession. From the development of the Piazza in the 1630s to the1730s when William Hogarth established St Martin’s Lane Academy. Many artists involved in this went on to be the founding members of the Royal Academy, which from the 1770s was housed at Somerset House.

Take a Sunday morning to explore the British Museum’s recently refurbished Islamic galleries and learn the stories behind one of the world’s great collections of Islamic art.

Discover the exquisite art of the Northern Renaissance through the work on display at the National Gallery, including Albrecht Dürer, Rogier van der Weyden, Jan van Eyck, Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

How our public collections evolve and expand and how they present and represent their collections is fascinating and provides a window into the worlds of private collecting, ideas about taste and how cultural and societal forces affect these ideas. Visiting different galleries and art venues each week this course explores the roles played by patrons, art dealers, curators and art critics across time in shaping our ideas about art.

Explore Georgian painting, sculpture, architecture, and decorative arts, and consider them within the context of the history and culture of the 18th century exploring museums, galleries and other places in London.