Visual Cultures and Art History

Overview

The main ambitions of the Visual Cultures and Art History program from Masaryk University are: 

• to train students to a complex understanding of visual cultures from the Middle Ages to the present day, with a deep focus on the role of visual media in constructing and shaping the analysed societies; 
• to promote skills in collective work, scholarly research, intellectual independency, and cultural mediation in both academic and non-academic institutions (i.e., museums, galleries, research institutes, editing houses); 
• to put forward a transdisciplinary approach to visual, material, and ritual cultures, at the core of research in Bildwissenschaft and art history; 
• lastly, to create an international network of institutions collaborating around this master, conceived in an avant-garde way both on theoretical and practical bases.

Practical training

Special focus on practical know-how, both academic and non-academic, will be an integrative part of the master’s programme. As part of their curriculum, students will be doing a – a semester long – mandatory traineeship in a cultural or scholarly institution. These can be ranging from outstanding museal poles (with all possible jobs related), international research institutes, cultural foundations, or editing houses. As such, the practical training will be related deeply to the type of institution chosen for the internship, proposing a broad range of possibilities. Furthermore, during the collective work on a research project, part of the curriculum, students will be introduced to the practical aspects of scholarly work, going through all the steps of the intellectual elaboration throughout the publication of an original scientific project.

Career opportunities

• Cultural management and monument care
• Art consulting
• Tourism
• Journalism (press and publishing, radio, television, online services)
• Pedagogy (high schools, teaching to adults, university) and mediation of art
• Cultural Mediation