About our department

2021 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. 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 are celebrating and documenting this anniversary with a webpage on the history of the Department, from its foundation until today.