The department of Art History at the Open University has always been dedicated to widening participation in the discipline. We believe by offering a range of free courses on Art History, all types of learners gain access to understanding art and its histories, as well as the visual world around them. From Renaissance Venice to Dutch painting to the Enlightenment to graffiti, it’s all here, so take a look! It’s free!
Find out more about these glittering objects in this course. You’ll learn what an icon is, how to read it, and its functions, both in the past and today.
This Grand Tour was undertaken by wealthy people in eighteenth-century Europe who travelled around present-day Italy (and sometimes Greece too) studying monuments and painting and writing about what they saw. This course is a chance for you to follow in their footsteps!
Are images we see every day always what they seem? Look beyond your first glance and discover how images can persuade you to think a certain way. In this interactive, you can apply your newly acquired visual literacy skills to images from the media as well as masterpieces.
Journey around the world in our interactive to discover how 'objects' aren't just merely beautiful art works but can also reveal fascinating histories and global connections. Produced as a resource to support our co-production of BBC's Civilisations.
Explore the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, from 1960s dress to contemporary glass and Renaissance tapestry. Can you place a range of objects in their correct Gallery in the museum? Try this interactive. Produced as a resource to support our co-production of BBC's Secrets of the Museum.
This free course, Art in Renaissance Venice, considers the art of Renaissance Venice and how such art was determined in many ways by the city's geographical location and ethnically diverse population. Studying Venice and its art offers a challenge to the conventional notion of Renaissance art as an entirely Italian phenomenon.
Course learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
Seventeenth-century Dutch painting stands out from other art of the same period and even more so from that of previous centuries on account of its apparently ‘everyday’ character. Works by artists such as Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch and Jacob van Ruisdael seem to offer a faithful picture of life in the Netherlands at the time. In studying this free course, Dutch painting of the Golden Age, you will discover that there is much more to Dutch painting than meets the eye. You will explore scholarly debates about the possible meanings that might be attributed to this type of picture and learn how the very idea of ‘realism’ in art has been challenged in recent times.
Course learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
In this free course, Art and the Mexican Revolution, you will explore one of Diego Rivera’s key murals which was commissioned by the Mexican government in the period after the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. These monumental public artworks, designed to win over the Mexican peasantry and working-class to the new post-revolutionary state, brought Mexican mural artists international acclaim and Rivera was subsequently awarded important commissions in the United States. Yet, due to his commitment to a figurative form of propaganda, Rivera’s reputation suffered during the Cold War period and these Mexican murals are now largely left out of dominant accounts of twentieth-century United States art.
Course learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
How have the seasons been represented in art over the centuries? These films explore this question by analysing paintings by famous artists from Bruegel to Van Gogh as well as some less well-known works.
What influenced Goya? Did Napoleon's invasion of Spain alter the course of Goya's career? This free course will guide you through the works of Goya and the influences of the times in which he lived. Anyone with a desire to look for the influences behind a work of art will benefit from studying this course.
Course learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
Individual artists have been the traditional focus of art history, but how do we evaluate the figure of the artist? This free course, Artists and authorship: the case of Raphael, takes the life of Raphael as a case study. You will examine sixteenth-century sources to explore the creation of artistic authorship in the early modern era. The course explores past and current approaches to the artist in terms of authorship, identity and subjectivity. You will consider issues such as the relationship between the artist's life and work, the enduring notion of 'genius' and the artist as a source of meaning.
Course learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
What is art? What is visual culture? How have they changed through history? This free course, Art and visual culture: Medieval to modern, explores the fundamental issues raised by the study of western art and visual culture over the last millennium. It moves from discussing the role of the artist and the functions of art during the medieval and Renaissance periods to considering the concept and practice of art in the era of the academies, before finally addressing the question of modern art and the impact of globalisation.
Course learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
This free course, Visions of protest: Graffiti, introduces students to contrasting understandings of graffiti. It draws on a wide range of graffiti examples, including mystery zebras in Hackney, fish graffiti in Morecambe, 'tags' in a Milton Keynes underpass, a McDonald's advert and exhibits at a highly established art gallery, the Tate Modern. Students will consider different arguments for and against the perception of graffiti as a form of art or as vandalism and explore how graffiti has been used as a form of communication and as an articulation of protest.
Course learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
In this free course, Brighton Pavilion, you will examine the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, and its relationship to nineteenth-century Romanticism and exoticism. You'll begin with a biographical discussion of the Prince of Wales, afterwards Prince Regent and eventually King George IV, to whose specifications the Pavilion was built. With the help of video and still images you will take a tour of the Pavilion, examining the exterior then a series of interior rooms as a visitor in the 1820s may have experienced them. Besides this you will look at contemporary aesthetic, cultural and political reactions to the building, its contents and its social milieu.
You can prepare for this free course, Making sense of art history, by looking around you. It's likely that wherever you are you'll be able to see some images. It's also likely that many of these will be intended to have some sort of effect on you. In the course itself you will be exploring the power of images via a study of contemporary art from the 1980s onwards. Taking the time to look beyond the immediate appearance of an art work to consider what the artist might be trying to say can be immensely rewarding.
Course learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to: