Online Art History Courses

Frida Kahlo was just one of many Mexican artists who brought together politics, identity, and an avant-garde spirit in their air, making Mexico City one of the most exciting art centres of the 1920s and 1930s. Looking at murals, prints, photographs, and paintings, this course in an introduction to a brilliant and thought-provoking movement.

In the wake of war, many people in Weimar Republic Berlin revelled in what Sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld called the 'varieties of love'. This course explores the art of the era: the modern beauties of 1920s Berlin and how they rebelled against the ugliness of oppression.

Look in depth at four artists a week across a series of themes from body and power to socio-environmental change. What links can be made between artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and where is art heading?

In this course we shall explore the Medieval history of the Sahara and the Sahel, looking at the rise of the Gold Kingdoms, Trans-Saharan trade, cultural synergy, and spread of Islam into the region.

This lecture will examine how the intersections of art, architecture, philosophy and sensory experience of Chinese gardens show continuity and change from the early modern period to the present day. In early modern China, gardens were more than places of retreat, they functioned as major social, cultural and economic sites. In our time of ecological crisis, gardens play a crucial role in mitigating pollution. This lecture is part of the 2026 Art History Festival organised by the Association for Art History.

Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Breughel the elder - two northern Renaissance artists, and their influence on 20th-century artists known as the Surrealists. Artists divided in time by 500 years, but who share many similarities with their strange and curious subjects and objects conjured up to ignite amazement, wonder, discussion and even outrage.

Explore the life and work of Artemisia Gentileschi, a leading Baroque painter whose bold depictions of women and artistic self-fashioning challenged expectations. This session examines her major works, self-portraits and legacy within the context of seventeenth-century art and society. This lecture is part of the 2026 Art History Festival organised by the Association for Art History.

In this lecture we examine how ancient technologies of colour, as the most immediate sensory element in any work of art, were sourced, processed, and disseminated across cultures and assimilated into diverse systems of meaning and significance from China to the Mediterranean world. This lecture is part of the 2026 Art History Festival organised by the Association for Art History.

This lecture will explore the key techniques, subjects and roles of early prints. Looking at the prints of Mantegna, Dürer, Parmigianino, Raphael and Marcantonio Raimondi, we will see how early prints were made and used by different audiences, including courtly and scholarly circles. This lecture is part of the 2026 Art History Festival organised by the Association for Art History.