Program Overview

Introduction to the Courtauld Institute of Art

The Courtauld Institute of Art is a renowned centre for the teaching and research of art history, offering a range of programs for students and professionals.

Undergraduate and Postgraduate Programs

The Courtauld Institute offers undergraduate and postgraduate programs in the history, conservation, curation, and business of art. These programs provide students with a comprehensive education in art history, theory, and practice.

Short Courses

The Courtauld Institute offers a variety of short courses, including:

• Study Tours: These tours provide students with the opportunity to explore art and architecture in different locations around the world.
  • Built upon Waters: The Sea in Venetian Art from Tintoretto to Canaletto
  • Bloomsbury in Sussex
  • Munich Moderns – May 2026
  • Ravenna: Capital of the Mosaic
  • Vienna 1900: A Total Work of Art – May 2026
  • NEW Medieval Exeter and Devon
  • Munich Moderns – September 2026
  • Vienna 1900: A Total Work of Art – September 2026
  • NEW Eighteenth-Century Idylls: A Study Tour of the 'Matchless Vale' of the Thames
  • NEW Disegno: Workshop Tradition, Concept, and Living Practice – A Study Tour to Pisa
  • Uptown, Midtown, Downtown: An Art-Historical Tour of New York City
  • NEW Masterpieces of Early-Modern Spain: A Study Tour to Madrid and Toledo
• Summer School: The Summer School offers a range of courses, including:
  • Summer School online
    • 2- NEW Philip Guston and Twentieth-Century American Art
    • 3- Carlo Crivelli and His Contemporaries
    • 4- Nature, Gender, Form: New Approaches to the Pre-Raphaelites
  • Summer School on campus
    • 5- The Rise and Fall of the 'High Renaissance'
    • 6-Re-Imagining the Everyday: Genre Paintings and Prints in Sixteenth-to Eighteenth-century Europe
    • 7-Rococo to Revolution: Histories of French Art
    • 8-Collectors, Exhibitions and Art Dealers: Modern Art in Europe
    • 9- NEW- Post-War German Art and the Question of National Identity
    • 10- Venezianità: The Art of Being Venetian in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
    • 18-Bright Lights and Dark Visions: Nordic Art from the Danish Golden Age to Edvard Munch
    • 21- NEW Beauty, Luxury, and Power: The Arts of the Mughal Empire
    • 23- A Nervous State of Affairs: Art in Vienna
    • 17-NEW Modernity and the Female Body in late 19th-Century Paris
    • 20 – The Byzantine World: the Arts of the East Roman Empire from the Fourth to the Fifteenth Centuries
    • 12-Constructing the Heart of Empire: London's Public Architecture
    • 15-The Art of the Crusades
    • 11- On the Roof of the World: An Introduction to the Art and Architecture of Tibet and the Himalayas
    • 14-NEW From Rodin to Hepworth: The Emergence of Modern Sculpture in London and Paris
    • 13-Fathers of Modern Art: Manet and Cézanne
    • 24-Unruly Britannia: The Brit Art Renaissance of
    • 22-NEW War and Peace in Netherlandish Art, 1500–1700
    • 19-NEW Art and Audacity: Women in Modernism c.1905–1925
    • 16-NEW In Pursuit of Fame: Art and Patronage in Baroque Rome
• Spring School: The Spring School offers courses such as:
  • Variations on a Theme: Modernism in Art and Music
  • Making Sense of Art History: The Fundamentals
  • NEW- Making Sense of Christian Art: Key Figures, Style and Contexts
  • "The Root of Everything" – Drawing in Europe from the Renaissance to the Modern Period
  • Looking at Ourselves: A Historical and Practical Exploration of Portrait Photography
• Autumn School: The Autumn School offers courses such as:
  • Making Sense of the Arts of Islam: An Introduction
  • Making Sense of 'The Classical' in Art
  • Making Sense of Modern and Contemporary Art: The Pleasures of Looking
  • Variations on a Theme: Art & Music in Early Baroque Europe
  • National Socialist, "Degenerate", Émigré and Looted Art: The Aesthetics, Economics and Ethics of Art in the Third Reich
  • The Art of the Sacred in Byzantium and Italy: Materiality and Meaning
• Evening Study at the Courtauld: The Evening Study program offers courses such as:
  • Holbein at the Court of Henry VIII
  • ARCHIVE: The Emergence of Modern Sculpture in Paris and London, 1890 – 1930
  • ARCHIVE: The Long Road to Success: Giulio Romano between Rome and Mantua
  • The Fear and the Fury: Abstract Expressionism
  • NEW- The Arts of the Aztec Empire
  • NEW The Materiality of Modern and Contemporary Painting in Five Chapters
  • Making Sense of Ideas on Art: Image theories from G.W.F. Hegel to Horst Bredekamp
  • Variations on a Theme: The Renaissance in Art and Music
  • NEW Not Room Enough: American Art Beyond the City
  • Europe and the World: Encounters in Art
  • NEW Digging up the Past: Collecting Antiquities and Paleo-Christian Relics in Early-Modern Rome
  • Magnificent Women: Elite Female Agency and the Arts of Medieval Europe
  • Intersecting Practices: Architecture and the Figurative Arts in Early Modern Italy

Making Sense of Ideas on Art: Image Theories from G.W.F. Hegel to Horst Bredekamp

This course explores key arguments in art history and visual theory, examining how images act, how style emerges, and how meaning is produced. The course begins with G.W.F. Hegel's concept of art as "Geist" (spirit) in sensuous form and proceeds to discuss the ideas of Heinrich Wölfflin, Erwin Panofsky, Ernst Gombrich, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Svetlana Alpers, Clement Greenberg, Rosalind Krauss, Francis Haskell, and Horst Bredekamp.

Course Details

• Lecturer: Dr Matthias Vollmer
• Format: 5 pre-recorded lectures with 5 Zoom seminars
• Duration: 5 weeks
• Dates: Wednesday 7 October – Wednesday 4 November 2026
• Time: 18:00
• Fee: £245

Lecturer's Biography

Dr Matthias Vollmer is an Adjunct Professor at the Freie Universität Berlin European Studies Programme. He has taught interdisciplinary seminars on medieval and Renaissance art, as well as courses on modern art, and currently researches the principles of visualisation in art and science.