Art & Design Histories & Theories MA

Why study MA Art & Design Histories & Theories at University College Falmouth?

MA Art & Design Histories & Theories - additional information (1.36 MB)

The postgraduate Art & Design Histories & Theories course is a flexible part-time course that explores the last 100 years of art and design, from Art Nouveau and Post-impressionism to Post-modernism, and the cultural theories that have supported and interpreted this rich and dynamic period.

With teaching and lectures taking place in the evenings, this course offers students the flexibility they need to work alongside their studies.

Tell me more about the MA Art & Design Histories & Theories course

Art and design history is not just about the past; it’s also about the present and the future. The role that society has played in shaping art and culture over the last century and the role it will play in shaping the next is the focus of this innovative course.

Through research, analysis, criticism and theory, you’ll develop a critical awareness of contemporary culture as well as movements such as post-impressionism, art nouveau, pop art and postmodernism, in their wider social and historical context.

You’ll also identify and develop your own particular research interests. High-profile guest speakers and self-funded study trips to London, Paris, Berlin or Barcelona complement the course, whilst work placements give you the practical experience you’ll need to turn the inspiration you’ll find here into a rewarding profession. Recent students on the course have undertaken work placements at Tate St Ives and Newlyn Art Gallery.

Berlin study trip

Date: 15-19 February 2010
Cost: £200

Facilities

You can take advantage of the excellent library and information services across both campuses, with up-to-date publications in art and design, a wide range of journals, collections, and research database facilities accessible through the library database and remotely via the internet.

Both campuses also offer advanced IT facilities with a range of specialist and general software. All students have access to a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) through which to communicate with each other and course tutors, collaborate on group projects and access a range of online resources, including lecture podcasts, our library of selected texts, videos and images and ‘Coming to Terms'- a glossary of specialist terminology. Please note that access to a broadband-enabled computer will be needed for students to take advantage of the VLE.

Library staff provide online tutorial support for individual projects and students can sign up for a wide range of IT workshops. Academic Support staff are there to guide those less confident about essay writing, and there are excellent services for students who are dyslexic. There's also a rapidly developing postgraduate culture at Falmouth and you're encouraged to access the MA shared lecture programme of visiting speakers.

Course structure

This is a two-year part-time course built around 20 credit units delivered over 90 weeks. There are three one week condensed residential blocks, and eight study blocks for which you will complete written assignments and distance
learning projects; optional weekend Study Skills events help support research, essay writing and presentation skills.

The one-week blocks are delivered at Falmouth, St Ives, or other strategically located study centres in the UK, and include one Study Trip abroad. These allow you to meet other students, share information and ideas, and to experience and interpret art and design at first hand supported by lectures from tutors and gallery experts.

You are expected to undertake approximately eight to ten hours private study a week and spend three to five hours consulting course materials and communicating with your peers to develop collaborative learning. Tutors will
be available at specified times each week and will lead units, seminars, workshops and study forums.

The course culminates in a written dissertation on a self-selected topic, negotiated with your tutor.

Year 1

A series of sessions on the theories, concepts and approaches that underpin the study of art and design will introduce you to the conceptual tools and methods of enquiry and help you structure writing and research. Beginning with a consideration of art and design history as discrete disciplines, the unit will explore their increasing openness to the methods and methodologies of other fields of enquiry such as cultural geography, oral history or feminism.

This is followed by themed units on Cities and Suburbs: Case Studies in Modernism and Modernity, which supports the study trip abroad, and Art and Design in the Shadow of Catastrophe, exploring the art and culture of the period from the end of the Second World War to the ‘crisis of modernism' in the late 1970s. Visual Culture: Themes and Debates includes a symposium with visiting experts, workshops and opportunities for you to develop your professional skills and work experience.

Year 2

The Tate St Ives School, which allows you to work directly with gallery staff and access resources at St Ives, is an enjoyable and stimulating start to the year. The research, preparation and writing of your dissertation (10,000 - 15,000 words) on a self-selected topic agreed in consultation with academic staff , however, is the major piece of work for this level. Thematic sessions on Representation and Meaning and Subjectivity and Identity, meanwhile, enable you to explore theoretical approaches to analysing visual art and culture.

How is the course taught?

The core programme will be delivered via a specially designed Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) that allows you to take part in seminars, workshops and tutorials with tutors and fellow students, listen to and interact with visiting speakers, and participate in collaborative projects.

Individual assignments enable you to identify and specialise in a preferred subject area (such as architecture, contemporary fine art practice, fashion/textiles, film, graphic design or photography), explore theoretical perspectives to analyse art and design and develop expertise in constructing and sustaining academic argument.

You'll have regular communication with tutors and other students, sharing in lively debates and interrogating ideas through video links and web-based learning opportunities. A structured programme of selected texts and further reading guides you through each unit, and provides support for independent study. Online study skills tutorials and workshops help you to refine essay writing and presentation skills and support problems with library research, while access to visiting speakers adds variety and new perspectives to your studies.

Professional practice

MA Art & Design Histories & Theories attracts students who want to pursue careers in the arts and cultural industries, as well as those who study for the sheer pleasure of it. Professional practice is an important aspect of the course and Study Schools help students develop professional skills in arts writing and gain insights into how museums and galleries work.

An optional professional practice element exists at the end of year one and you'll be encouraged to secure work placements in museums, galleries or other cultural institutions. Previous successful placements include the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Crafts Council, Tate St Ives, Newlyn Gallery and the Falmouth Art Gallery, amongst others.

Students are encouraged to get involved with professional projects, attend conferences and write for academic journals and magazines. The course recently hosted the Networks of Design conference, at University College Falmouth. Professor Bruno Latour, one of the most respected experts in this field, was the keynote speaker and the conference attracted over
300 delegates from across the world. With over 150 speakers, the conference gave students unique access the latest work in this fast developing field.

MA Art & Design Histories & Theories is also actively involved in collaborative research projects with the Tate, the Leach Pottery, the St Ives Archives Trust and other arts providers in the region, exploring art communities and cultural practice in the South West. 

Visiting speakers

Design Art?

Monday 7 December 2009
Speaker: Damon Taylor

This talk takes as its central subject of study developments in European furniture design since the early 1990's. The suggestion is that the work of designers such as Jurgen Bey, Maarten Baas, Vincent Dubourg and Dunne and Raby represent a new approach to furniture design which sees the production of ‘proposals' and numbered limited editions which are effectively presented as art pieces. These then can be considered ‘functional' objects the primary function of which is to communicate, critique and stimulate dialogue rather than seat diners or support tea cups.

What is of interest is the convergence of art and design practice through what may be described as ‘critical design', relational aesthetics and Design Art, in a period of consumerist materialism when even everyday things appear as objects with ‘attitude'. Through an emphasis on the critical methodology employed the objective of this session is to attempt to understand the way in which certain practices are being written into art and design history in a cultural and political context in which designed objects are perceived to already posses a form of auratic power.

St Ives (1860-1930) - The impact of the artistic community upon the town and the townsfolk

11 November 2009
Speaker: David Tovey

Drawing upon his new Social History of the St Ives art colony, David Tovey will assess the impact of the artists upon St Ives commercially, physically and culturally. He will explain how the artists boosted the fledgling tourist industry, transformed the tourist season, influenced the type of tourist that came to St Ives and became tourist attractions themselves, leading to St Ives becoming an unique tourist destination. He will also examine the impact of the artists on local businesses and the extraordinary initiative shown by local entrepreneurs in satisfying the artists' requirements for houses, studios, exhibition space and painting materials.

Whereas a number of leading figures in the town, with whom the artists soon socialised, felt that the presence of the artists had "broadened the mental vision of the townsfolk", not all locals welcomed the ‘Bohemian' ways of the artists, and David will analyse the problems that the artists had with various sections of the community, particularly the most fervent Methodists, who labelled them "paint-wasters"! Nevertheless, the artists were still able to overcome differences in class, wealth, religion, education and dress to fraternise with the fisherfolk and to engage them as models. David will also consider the impact the artistic community had on music, drama, literature and sport, and on local attitudes to such matters as women's rights and animal welfare.

Multimedia Representations of Memory and Oral History

21 October 2009
Speaker: Anna Kiernan

Anna Kiernan is Course Leader for BA(Hons) Journalism at University College Falmouth. She was a co-investigator on the AHRC-funded oral history project Museum Lives at the Natural History Museum where her work included directing a short film which was shown at The National Gallery this September. She is working on a PhD in Literature and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College and will also be talking about multimedia representations of memory and oral history.

Rethinking the Normal: Disability and the Politics of Difference in Contemporary Culture

27 April 2009
Speaker: David Serlin, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

David Serlin's lecture drew on examples from a range of sources -- cosmetic surgery to popular television, beauty contests to Marc Quin's sculpture Alison Lapper Pregnant -- to explore the concept of normalcy, why it's bankrupt, and why it should be dismantled.

David's research interests focus on nineteenth and twentieth century cultural studies of medicine and health in national and transnational perspective, disability studies, gender/sexuality studies and queer theory, material culture and museum studies, and architecture, urbanism, and the built environment.

Podcast: David Serlin Lecture

Additional speakers

Jo Littler

Conferences & symposia

Our Art & Design Histories & Theories course plays host to a number of conferences, symposia and guest speakers.

Networks of Design

2008 Conference of the Design History Society, University College Falmouth, 3–6 September 2008

Keynote Speakers

Bruno Latour, professor and vice-president for research at Science Po Paris

Jeremy Myerson, design journalist, author and Director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre, and InnovationRCA

Jan Konings, international designer and Droog collaborator

The international conference Networks of Design responds to recent academic interest in the fields of design, technology and the social sciences in the ‘networks' of interactions within processes of knowledge formation and design.

Studying networks foregrounds infrastructure, negotiations, processes, strategies of interconnection, and the heterogeneous relationships between people and things. Within the wider context of post-modernism, it seems, we are experiencing a paradigm shift in design history and this conference offers an opportunity to address, explore and assess that shift, providing a platform for international debate and exchange.

For more information please consult the web site www.networksofdesign.co.uk or email Fiona Hackney at
networksofdesign@falmouth.ac.uk.

Belonging in Britain

Course Leader Fiona Hackney organised this thought provoking and well-attended symposium. Entitled Belonging in Britain, the aim of the symposium was to outline the debates around ‘race’ and cultural heritage, defining terms and exploring what ‘Belonging in Britain’ means.

Read more about ‘Belonging in Britain’

Inside/Out: Curating Today

This event brought four curators and an artist together to discuss debates surrounding the curation and display of contemporary art.

Speakers included:

Claire Doherty, Senior Research Fellow in Fine Art, University of the West of England, Bristol, and leader of Situations, (www.situations.org.uk), whose talk, "Curating Wrong Places or Where Have All the Penguins Gone?" looked at the predominance of place in contemporary art curating and commissioning.

Stella d'Ailly, Curator and founder of Mossutstallningar, Stockholm, talking about "The Problem with Jumping on Your Audience"

Kit Hammonds, Curator South London Gallery, who explored the role of the ‘Kunsthalle' versus the museum, commercial gallery or salon

Pat Wilson, Curator & Lucy Willow, Artist, discussing a project they had collaborated on in East Kent.

Student projects

http://historyofartanddesign.co.uk/

Research and publications

For further reference, there are papers to read from research and academic conferences to which Fiona Hackney has contributed. These papers will provide a sense of the research activities that go on in the course:

The Show/Tell issue of Working Papers on Design: Read online

Use Your Hands for Happiness: Home Craft and Make-do-and-mend in British Women's Magazines in the 1920s and 1930s', article by Fiona Hackney in Journal of Design History, Special Issue: Issue Do It Yourself: Democracy and Design, Edited by Paul Atkinson, Vol. 19 No. 1 2006. Read the article online.

Transatlantic Print Culture 1880-1940: edited by Ann Ardis and Patrick Collier and published by Palgrave Macmillan in November 2008, the book is a collection of extended essays that were presented at ‘Transatlantic Print Culture,’ a conference convened at the University of Delaware in 2007; Fiona’s paper formed the basis of ‘Women are News’: British Women’s magazines 1919-1939,’ chapter 7 in the book.

This collection of essays maps out the remarkable sea change that happened both in the UK and in America in literacy, print and visual design around the turn of the twentieth century. For more information on this publication, please click here.

Answers and advice about the course

For further information about MA Art & Design Histories & Theories at University College Falmouth, please email admissions@falmouth.ac.uk or telephone Admissions on 01326 214360.

If you have any queries about the course please visit our HelpMe Forum

HelpMe Forum: MA Art & Design Histories & Theories

Funding your study

A Master’s degree represents a significant investment in your future, and you will rightly be concerned about funding. Our student fees & funding section outlines fees for full and part time students and has guides to introduce you to ways of funding your course at Falmouth.

Creative Enterprise Cornwall

Put your skills to use in Cornwall's dynamic business environment on a paid placement project

Creative Enterprise Cornwall is a project offering financial support to postgraduate students who live in Cornwall during their studies. It is run by University College Falmouth and part-funded by the European Social Fund. The aim of the project is to promote graduate opportunities within Cornwall - develop new business skills if you are changing your career, or use the opportunity to strengthen the skills you already have. A maximum of £1250 is available.

The placement project must meet the following criteria:

• It must take place in Cornwall or benefit a Cornish company
• It must meet your course objectives (Course Leader must agree to the placement)
• Must be a minimum of one working week in duration (maximum 3 weeks) and be confirmed by the company

More information about the project can be found here

Additional information

2010 Postgraduate Prospectus (4.82 MB)

Career opportunities

Graduates of MA Art & Design Histories & Theories go on to pursue the subject through teaching and research, museum curating, arts education, journalism, publishing, or arts administration.

University College Falmouth has a thriving research culture and recent graduates from this course have won full-time funded places to study at doctoral level. Others lecture in higher education or work in galleries, museums, arts journalism or arts education.

Entry requirements

Entry requirements through the university sector include Honours Degrees, Foundation Degrees and HNDs in a related subject. If you have solid professional industry experience rather than academic achievement, this may be acceptable for entry to study at this level through a process called APEL (Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning).

Direct entry to the second year requires either a degree in art and/or design history or equivalent professional experience in the subject field.

More information about entry requirements and applying for our postgraduate courses can be found here

For further information about MA Art & Design Histories & Theories at University College Falmouth, please email admissions@falmouth.ac.uk or telephone Admissions on 01326 214360.

Related courses

• Curatorial Practice MA
• Fine Art: Contemporary Practice MA