Support Us

Our work to facilitate the study and practice of art history relies on the generous support of those who want to see the subject thrive and remain strong for future generations.

We are committed to serving those engaged in art history, those who are considering it as a field of study and those who want to learn more about art through its histories.

Some of our recent successes on behalf of art history include:

• Re-introducing a grants programme for research, publication and professional development, which has since 2016 awarded over £126,000 to over 130 recipients.
• Creating, with the National Exchange College (NEC), the first A-level course online and addressing the geographic disparity of these courses offered almost exclusively in the South of England. This has contributed to a 40% rise in students sitting the A-level exam since 2019.
• Bringing art history to over 100,000 secondary school students in six years through a free teacher residential programme in Leeds. Building on this success, we have secured multi-year funding to increase the reach to 140,000 students over a span of seven years.
• Introducing a new continuing professional development programme for primary school teachers to incorporate art history into their curriculum
• Publishing a series of special issues of our journal, Art History, which focuses on critical race studies. One issue featured an intervention on Decolonizing Art History that has been downloaded over 100,000 times, far more than any article in the journal’s history.
• Inaugurating a zero-fee licence from DACS for images used in scholarly journals
• Creating a funded, four-month residency for art historians

Our field, along with other subjects in the arts and humanities, faces challenges posed by government policy which strongly guided secondary students to STEM subjects. While the disparaging rhetoric around the study of art and the humanities has ceased, universities, facing financial difficulties, have disproportionately reduced arts and humanities provision compared to other subjects.  Additionally, Open Access publishing has reduced our income dramatically and with it our capacity to support the field.

A gift to the Association for Art History is more needed and more important than ever.