About Our Department

We are a small and accessible department, with a strong interdisciplinary outlook. Aberdeen is an excellent location in which to study Art History in an academically rigorous way and with close attention to the materiality of the object.

In 2021, we marked the 50th anniversary of the Department of Art History at our University. In 1970, the University of Aberdeen appointed David G. Irwin to a lectureship in “Fine Art”. The following year, Aberdeen offered for the first time an 'ordinary' (first year) course in History of Art - thus inaugurating the subject at the University of Aberdeen. Over the coming years, Irwin established a fully-fledged History of Art Department, and degree-level teaching in this subject, with the first students graduating with a degree in the subject in 1975/6.

We have celebrated and documented this anniversary with a webpage on the history of the Department, from its foundation until today.

Art History Staff