A bachelor’s in art history is nearly always a BA. A few schools award a BFA in art history or an art history track inside a studio degree, and many students take it as a concentration inside a broader humanities or liberal arts major. All of those are legitimate. What separates a real art history major from a label is whether the upper-division coursework is seminar work with primary research, or a longer stack of surveys.
This page covers the degree titles you will meet, what the four years actually contain, why the internship matters more than most applicants realize, and how to compare programs without relying on the catalog’s marketing pages.
Quick answers
Can I get a bachelor’s degree in art history online?
Yes. Accredited institutions offer the BA in art history at a distance, and the diploma does not record the delivery mode. In IPEDS 2024, 339 institutions reported bachelor’s-or-higher completions in art history, and 253 of them reported offering distance-education programs (IPEDS 2024). Availability of a fully online art history major is narrower than that count suggests, because many of those institutions offer distance education in other subjects.
How is this different from a studio art or design degree?
Studio art, graphic design, and photography are production degrees evaluated on a portfolio and critique. Art history is a research and writing degree evaluated on papers. You will look at an enormous amount of work and make almost none of it. Students who want both usually take a studio minor or a double major rather than expecting one degree to do both jobs.
How many credits is the degree?
Approximately 120 semester hours, typically four years full-time. The art history core usually runs 33 to 45 credits depending on the school, with the surveys early and the seminars in the junior and senior years. Confirm each school’s totals rather than assuming they match.
Do I need to know a foreign language?
Often at least one at the undergraduate level, and reading knowledge of German, French, or Italian is the traditional expectation for European fields. Graduate programs frequently examine it. If you already know which region you want to study, start the relevant language early, because it is the requirement that most often delays students later.
Does an internship matter?
More than the GPA does, for museum and gallery hiring. Collections, registration, curatorial, education, and gallery internships are how entry-level candidates prove they can handle objects, records, and deadlines. Ask an online program directly how it places students in an internship near where they live before you enroll.
Is a bachelor’s enough for museum work?
For some jobs. Gallery assistant, museum educator, visitor services, development, registration assistant, collections assistant, and auction-house administrative roles hire bachelor’s graduates who have internships. Curatorial work usually does not: most curator postings ask for a master’s, and large art museums often expect a doctorate. See how to become a museum curator for that path.
At a Glance
- Common degree titles: BA in Art History, BA in Art History and Visual Culture, or a humanities major with an art history concentration
- Typical duration: 4 years full-time
- Approximate credits: 120 semester hours
- Programmatic accreditor: None for art history; verify institutional accreditation
- Common add-ons: Museum studies certificate, studio minor, a second language, or a history double major
Schools to compare
How We Rank Schools
Every school list on this site is ordered by the BOC Score, computed from the most
recent school-level data published by the U.S. Department of Education (College Scorecard and IPEDS).
To qualify, a school must be currently operating and accredited by an agency recognized by the
U.S. Department of Education. Each eligible school is then scored on five measures, percentile-ranked
against schools at the same credential level:
BOCSCORE
- Graduation rate 30%
- Median earnings, 10 years after entry 25%
- Average net price (lower is better) 20%
- Retention rate 15%
- Fully online availability 10%
Schools without enough outcome data appear after ranked schools, without a score.
Advertising never affects these rankings. Read the full methodology.
Graduation rate
97%
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
$124,080
Avg net price
$13,807/yr
TuitionContact school for pricing
Key stats
- Retention rate: 98%
- Programs offered: 100
Source:IPEDS · College Scorecard
Acceptance rate
11%
Graduation rate
93%
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
$92,446
Avg net price
$13,481/yr
TuitionIn‑state$16,347
Out‑of‑state$50,547
Key stats
- Retention rate: 97%
- Programs offered: 127
Source:Accreditor: Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior Colleges and University Commission · IPEDS · College Scorecard
Graduation rate
89%
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
$71,588
Avg net price
$6,541/yr
TuitionContact school for pricing
Key stats
- Retention rate: 97%
- Programs offered: 172
Source:IPEDS · College Scorecard
Graduation rate
98%
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
$110,066
Avg net price
$6,128/yr
TuitionContact school for pricing
Key stats
- Retention rate: 98%
- Programs offered: 47
Source:IPEDS · College Scorecard
Acceptance rate
7%
Graduation rate
95%
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
$82,735
Avg net price
$14,398/yr
TuitionIn‑state$67,832
Out‑of‑state$67,832
Key stats
- Retention rate: 97%
- Programs offered: 40
Source:Accreditor: New England Commission on Higher Education · IPEDS · College Scorecard
Graduation rate
96%
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
$88,665
Avg net price
$17,716/yr
TuitionContact school for pricing
Key stats
- Retention rate: 97%
- Programs offered: 38
Source:IPEDS · College Scorecard
Acceptance rate
33%
Graduation rate
84%
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
$74,915
Avg net price
$16,109/yr
TuitionIn‑state$16,414
Out‑of‑state$50,614
Key stats
- Retention rate: 92%
- Programs offered: 81
Source:Accreditor: Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior Colleges and University Commission · IPEDS · College Scorecard
Acceptance rate
7%
Graduation rate
89%
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
$80,490
Avg net price
$17,180/yr
TuitionIn‑state$69,600
Out‑of‑state$69,600
Key stats
- Retention rate: 92%
- Programs offered: 45
Source:Accreditor: New England Commission on Higher Education · IPEDS · College Scorecard
The main undergraduate pathways
Standalone art history major (BA)
The most common route. The department sets a survey sequence, a methods course, distribution requirements across periods and regions, and one or more seminars with a research paper. This is the version that prepares you for a graduate application, because the seminar paper is the writing sample.
Art history inside a broader humanities degree
Many online catalogs offer art history as a concentration within a liberal arts, humanities, or interdisciplinary studies degree. You get fewer art history credits and more breadth. That is a reasonable choice if the museum job you want cares about the bachelor’s rather than the subject, and a weaker one if you plan to apply to an art history MA, where committees read the transcript closely.
Art history paired with an applied field
Pairing the major with library science coursework, a museum studies certificate, arts administration, nonprofit management, or business puts an employable skill next to the subject knowledge. Registrars need database and records discipline. Development officers need fundraising skill. Educators need teaching practice. None of that arrives automatically with the survey sequence.
Typical coursework in a bachelor’s program
Course titles vary, but most programs cover the same territory:
- Survey sequence – ancient and medieval, early modern, and modern to contemporary, increasingly with required coverage outside Europe
- Methods and historiography – formalism, iconography, social history of art, feminist and postcolonial approaches, and material and technical study
- Regional and period courses – Greek and Roman, medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, nineteenth century, modern, contemporary, Asian, Islamic, African, Latin American, Indigenous American
- Media-specific courses – architecture, prints and drawings, photography, textiles, decorative arts, film and new media
- Museum studies – exhibition development, collections management, registration, cataloguing standards, conservation principles, provenance research
- Digital art history – imaging, collection databases, mapping, and quantitative or network approaches to collections
- Seminar and capstone – a substantial paper from primary sources, sometimes an exhibition proposal or a catalog entry set
- Language courses – German, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Arabic, Chinese, or Japanese depending on the field
Skills you may build
- Visual analysis: describing an object precisely enough that a reader who has not seen it can follow the argument
- Research: locating and reading primary sources, museum records, inventories, exhibition catalogs, and the existing academic literature
- Writing: sustained argument with citations, at a length most undergraduate majors never attempt
- Attribution and provenance reasoning: what evidence supports a claim about who made an object and where it has been
- Records literacy: cataloguing conventions, object numbering, condition vocabulary, and collection databases
- Cross-cultural context: reading objects made under assumptions very different from your own
Prerequisites and course sequencing
Most programs open with the survey sequence and a writing-intensive introduction, then gate the seminars behind the methods course. Practically, that means the sequence matters: if methods is offered only in the fall and the seminars require it, a spring start can cost you a year. Ask for the two-year rotation, not the catalog list.
Two other sequencing traps come up online. Language courses may sit outside the department and may not be available at a distance in the language your field needs. Internship credit often requires an approved site and a faculty supervisor, and finding both takes a term of lead time. Handle both in the first year rather than the third.
Transfer credits and degree planning
Art history transfers unevenly. General education, composition, and introductory surveys usually move without difficulty. Upper-division seminars and methods courses transfer less readily, because departments want their own methods training before their own seminars. Studio credits rarely substitute for art history credits even when the course title contains the word art.
When you evaluate a transfer offer, ask three questions in writing: how many credits the school will accept in total, how many will apply to the art history major rather than to free electives, and whether the residency requirement forces a minimum number of upper-division credits in residence. The difference between the answers is what actually determines your time to completion.
Accreditation and program quality checks
Confirm recognized institutional accreditation through the U.S. Department of Education database. There is no programmatic accreditor for art history. The National Association of Schools of Art and Design accredits art and design units, so a program housed inside an art school may fall in that scope, but that is not an art history accreditation, and its absence is not a warning sign for a university department.
Read the faculty page before the curriculum page. A department that lists four modernists and no premodern faculty cannot deliver the medieval or ancient seminar in the catalog, whatever the course numbers suggest.
Building experience while you study
The undergraduate years are when museum and gallery experience is cheapest to get. Volunteer at a local historical society, county museum, university gallery, or archive. Take the visitor-services or gallery-attendant job if it is available. Ask to work on a cataloguing backlog, which is unglamorous, always needed, and directly relevant to registration and collections jobs.
Keep evidence. A finished seminar paper, a catalog entry written to museum format, a provenance reconstruction, an exhibition proposal, or a database cleanup you can describe in specifics all read as work rather than as coursework. Graduates who present that material compete better than graduates who present a transcript.
Bachelor’s vs a master’s for art history
A bachelor’s is the entry credential for museum, gallery, and arts-administration support roles and for any job that simply wants a four-year degree. A master’s is the working credential for curatorial and specialist work, and at large art museums the doctorate is common. Nothing in art history is licensed, so the question is not what a credential authorizes. It is which door a hiring committee will open, and those doors are stacked by degree level more strictly here than in most humanities fields.
Data verified: September 5, 2026.
Salary, employment, and tuition figures on this page are sourced from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (OEWS May 2025; Employment Projections 2024–2034) and the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard (2023 cohort). The source agency and data year are cited inline with every statistic.
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